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Speaker Boehner says that what's holding up immigration reform is a 'trust gap' with President Obama. But that doesn't mean the door is shut on action in the House, even in an election year.

Immigration reform, long stalled in theUS House, is coming down to this: Republicans don't trust President Obama to enforce immigration laws and won't act on new legislation until that trust gap narrows.

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On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio said that distrust is one of the biggest obstacles to getting reform done.There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws," he said. "And it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.

Democrats dubbed this new focus on "trust" a dodge to get around the fact that Boehner can't control his fractious caucus. But some close observers of Congress's difficult and protracted struggle over immigration debate see some promise in this turn in the debate.

For the first time in a very long time, policy differences are not at the heart of the immigration dispute at least among many Republicans in the House, where immigration reform hit a wall after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill last year.

In an aside, Mr. Boehner commented Thursday that Republicans by and large support principles that he released at a private GOP retreat for House members a week ago. Both the president and key Democrats in the House have expressed openness to the principles, which allow for a path to legal status for some 11 million undocumented immigrants in America, but no special path to citizenship.

That said, the trust issue is a mountainous obstacle, depending on whose trust the president needs to win. If trustees include the faction of Republicans who will never agree to immigration reform, who dislike Mr. Obama so intensely that they cant bring themselves to support anything he supports, then, no, he is unlikely to ever win their trust. But if it refers to the Republican leadership and if it is the leadership that is driving reform in the House it is not mission impossible, according to some observers.

Certainly, some Republicans, no matter what, say We cant trust this guy and we cant negotiate with him. But theyre not the head of the party and theyre not the kingmaker, says Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, director of social policy and politics at Third Way, a moderate Democrat think tank. She, and others, can think of several ways that Mr. Obama can respond on the trust front.

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Immigration reform: Boehner says it's down to a matter of 'trust' (+video)