Now that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has lost his primary to a Tea Party opponent, immigration legislation may be a tougher prospect.
But in Texas, a number of Republicans say they’ll keep urging Washington to change immigration law.
Included among those legislators is State Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, who says there’s little state lawmakers can do to boost border security. So he’s urging lawmakers in Washington to help.
"I need the feds to step up," Rep. Gonzales says. "We need the federal government to put something in place that protects our families from an absolute assault on our safety from some of these transnational gangs and the weapons and human trafficking that we’re seeing right along IH-35."
Ray Prewett is with the Texas Citrus Mutual and Texas Vegetable Association, based in Mission near the border. He says sure, immigration reform is complicated, but vital because of the state's labor shortage.
"If we don’t have the workers through some kind of a guest worker program to come into Texas to do some of those jobs, more and more of the businesses are going to move to another country and our food is going to come from somewhere else," Prewett says.
These self-identified conservatives say they will join others, like people in the high tech sector and religious leaders, to pressure Congress on reform, especially after the state party approved a hard line on immigration last week.
