House chairman sees possible immigrant citizenship

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte has said in the past that he opposes a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

But at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with media, Goodlatte expanded on that, saying that once legalized, immigrants could potentially avail themselves of the existing ways to attain citizenship — either through family or employer sponsorship. The approach could leave illegal immigrants facing a lengthy and difficult process before citizenship becomes a possibility.

"Having a system where if you have now a lawful status and then you have another opportunity, whether it's employment based or whether it's family based, to be able to legalize your status in the future, those are good opportunities we could address," the Virginia Republican told reporters.

The Senate bipartisan group supports a more direct pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, though it would be conditioned on border security first, and President Barack Obama also wants eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Goodlatte said that his opposition to a special pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants doesn't mean he wants to foreclose the possibility for them ever to become citizens.

"There's a broad spectrum between deportation and an easy, special pathway to citizenship to find a way to bring people out of the shadows and give them a legal status that would allow them to be better able to participate in our society, and we should be focused there," Goodlatte said. "Now once you have that status you can qualify like anyone else."

Goodlatte also raised the prospect of eliminating the current requirement that immigrants who've been here illegally must return to their home country for as much as 10 years before returning to the U.S. "If you address some kind of reform of that aspect of it you can avail people of an opportunity that they don't have now," Goodlatte said.