WASHINGTON, January 13 (Sputnik) – Part of US government could suffer from a shutdown, caused by the Congress Republicans' and Democrats' disagreement on the immigration reform proposed by US President Barack Obama, US House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi warns.
"House Republicans are threatening a partial government shutdown, choosing a time of rising terrorism to imperil the security of our entire country to satisfy the most radical anti-immigrant fringes of their party," Pelosi said in a statement Monday.
Last December, Congress passed the 2015 spending bill that funds the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) only through February 2015, which means that Republicans and Democrats in Congress will have to return to the debate over Obama's executive action on immigration.
"Instead of building on the President's actions to restore accountability to our broken immigration system, Republicans have chosen to play games with the security of every American family. Republicans must abandon this spectacularly dangerous tactic," Pelosi stressed in her Monday statement.
Obama's executive action on immigration, announced on November 20, aims to prevent up to five million illegal immigrants from being deported from the United States. Republicans have strongly opposed Obama's immigration strategy, which almost led to a shutdown at the end of last year, when Congress was voting on the government funding bill.
Meanwhile in 2013, Congress could not agree either on an annual federal budget or a short-term funding bill, which led to a partial US government shutdown.
