“One thing at a time here. I guess that’s the big challenge. After we take care of the kids issue, I think the next step is going to have to be an improvement in our enforcement mechanism. And at the same time, modernization of our legal immigration system. Guest worker program, etc.

“The pushback you’re going to get is that the wait in line takes a long time. That’s not a function of this bill. That’s a function of a legal immigration process that’s broken. It’s backlogged for a lot of different reasons, one of them is that we don’t have a guest worker program. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to work here permanently. They just want to work here four months, five months out of the year and then go back home. With the kind of advances we have in technology today, there’s no reason we can’t make that process more efficient.”

Do you feel that this has become so partisan and such a part of the election year politics that it’s impossible to get anything done this year?

“When we weren’t talking about a plan, people were criticizing me for not having one. And now that we have a plan, people are criticizing that we’re doing it in an election year. I don’t think you can go to someone like Daniela and say, ‘hey we understand your plight, but you’re going to have to wait until after this election.’

“My hope, maybe it’s naive, is that we can look and say ‘when it comes to this specific group of kids who are so sympathetic, let’s put aside our partisan politics and deal with this issue.’ At least when it comes to these kids, let’s try to get this thing worked out as soon as possible."