Immigration Reform 2013 News: Can the Conflict in Syria Derail Progress?

With a military conflict in Syria looming on the immediate horizon for a Congress already pressed for time, immigration reform advocates are worried that the issue of undocumented residents will fall to the wayside of an overcrowded calendar.

"It is going to be a legislative scheduling issue. I don't know if we have enough calendar days in the schedule to address," Brad Bailey, the founder of Texas Immigration Solutions, a conservative group working to pass immigration reform through the House, told US News and World Report. "Syria popped up, but our economy and our broken immigration system are also very important. Our four walls have to be a priority."

There are nine working days for Congress in September. Before retiring for the summer in June, the Democratically-controlled Senate passed a bipartisan reform bill to provide a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers living in the United States, most of whom are Latino. However that bill has little chance of making through the House of Representatives in its current form.

That said, the cultural tide on immigration reform is turning in the United States. According to Reuters, Republican house lawmakers Daniel Webster of Florida and Aaron Schock of Illinois, amongst others, showed new support for a reform bill after the Senate bill passed. Last year, President Obama issued an executive order to stop deportations of immigrants who had entered the country illegally as children.

Now, however, with a military resolution authorizing strikes a must-have for the Obama administration, there's some fear that the movement may fall apart in the face of competing interests.

"At some point, the most conservative members of the House Republican conference will feel that they've made too many compromises with the Democratic Senate and President," political strategist Michael DiNiscia, the associate director of the Brademas Center for Congress at New York University told US News and World Reports. "Postponing or abandoning immigration reform may be the price the White House is forced to pay in exchange for compromises on these other must-pass items of the agenda."