Despite earlier indications that the Republican Party was looking to come around on immigration reform, the party's stance has grown shakier as Congress prepares to debate the new immigration proposal this summer.
While prominent Republican leaders have sounded the alarm in the last few months regarding the GOP's need to embrace immigration reform in order to sustain the party's viability in the coming election years, the party has still been somewhat split, with opponents of immigration reform claiming that the proposals were tantamount to amnesty for millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
In March, the Republican National Committee commissioned a report warning the party of the GOP's growing need to embrace a more open stance toward immigration reform, lest the party "continue to shrink to its core constituencies only." Yet, while the report initially brought out strong sentiments from the GOP in favor of immigration reform, things have been largely quiet regarding support from the Republicans on the bill heading into the critical legislative sessions in Congress on the bill.
"I think there are some Republicans that are fearful," Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who helped author the RNC report, told NBC News. "And they'd like to be for immigration reform, but they're worried."
That reluctance has prompted Democrats to remind the Republicans they could face stiff political consequences if Congress does not pass the immigration compromise legislation this summer, especially if GOP resistance to the bill derails it, as it did in 2007 when the bill failed at the then-Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
"I don't anticipate that they're going to block immigration reform. Let's hope that they don't," Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) told The Hill.com after a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
Republicans in the House are working on their own immigration compromise bill, the details of which have not been made public yet, while Republican Senate Whip John Coryn (R-Texas) has a proposal in the works that would strengthen border security provisions, some of which prominent Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have decried as devastating to any chance that undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. could have a legal pathway to citizenship.
"I'm very confident of getting to 60, but we need more than 60. We can pass this out with 60, 61, 62 but that doesn't do us much good in the House, so we're still on the hunt for votes," Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a Gang of Eight member, said of his bipartisan group's chances of their legislation passing.
A GOP failure to pass immigration reform would be a significant mistake for the party, some Democrat experts warn, such as Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist working with the Campaign for an Accountable, Moral and Balanced Immigration Overhaul,
"Voting against this bill is a political disaster for the Republican Party," said Manley. "They need to be reminded there are sound policy reasons to vote for it but also significant political reasons as well."
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