Former labor secretary Hilda Solis joins Obama’s push on immigration reform

by Ali Vitali, NBCNews.com Follow @NBCLatino

5:24 pm on 01/31/2013

With the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators joining forces with a new plan on comprehensive immigration reform, former Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis says President Obama will keep Congress on a tight leash to follow through on promises, a timeline of four to five months she says, before he will step in to enact his own plan.

Solis, who was the first Hispanic woman to head a Cabinet-level agency, joined Andrea Mitchell Thursday to add to the cautious optimism seen in the aftermath of statements from both the bipartisan group of senators and the president on plans for fixing America’s broken system for immigrants, but noted that “the House seems to be lagging a bit.”

“I think that there’s obviously this grand movement now and this collaboration on the bipartisan level,” Solis said. “So that helps to set the environment.”

But changing environments won’t make legislating immigration reforms any easier. “There’s still a lot of work to do. The president admits that as we get closer to a resolution or an actual law, that it’s going to be tough.” For this reason, Solis urged public engagement. As with many other Obama administration initiatives, the power of the people has not be overlooked.

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