The US needs a comprehensive reform system functional both for dealing with legal and illegal immigration in the country, the White House has said.

It refused to side with lawmakers who are seeking to put the ongoing reform on hold in the wake of the Boston marathon bombings. “We need an effective comprehensive immigration system that is functional both for dealing with legal immigration, as well as dealing with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are in this country,” the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his news conference on Monday.

“We believe that we need to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform for a whole host of reasons and the benefits that reform will provide to our country, to our economy, to our security,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Republican Senator Rand Paul in a letter to the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for halting the debate on immigration reform, in the wake of the terrorist attack in Boston last week.