It was the now Marijuana lobbyist John Boehner who was the Speaker of the House then not Ryan. You are right of course. When the original bill came to the House Boehner refused to bring it to the floor.
However, Ryan could have resurrected the bill during the DACA debacle. In addition, Ryan promised Trump wall funding if Trump signed the 2018 "omnibus" bill.
One of the reasons most conservatives would not vote for immigration reform was requests for amnesty, without a border wall. It was still a sore point with them that Reagan granted amnesty, after being promised border security and was lied to.
Memory of immigration reform under Ronald Reagan haunts current debate
But the memory of 1986 is driving Republicans and some Democrats to focus on additional border measures, saying certain (still undefined) criteria must be met before any of the current 11 million undocumented residents can begin to seek legal status.
"If there is not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place, I won't support it," Rubio told Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday, one of many interviews he has done to sell reform.
Calling the 1986 law "well-intentioned, but counterproductive," Rubio said, "If we're gonna deal with this, let's deal with it once and for all and in a way that this never, ever, happens again."
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