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Senators Agree to Revive Immigration Bill
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 33 minutes ago
Senate leaders reached a deal Thursday on reviving a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens and said they'll try to pass it before Memorial Day.
The agreement brokered by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., breaks a political stalemate that has lingered for weeks while immigrants and their supporters held rallies, boycotts and protests to push for action.
"We congratulate the Senate on reaching agreement and we look forward to passage of a bill prior to Memorial Day," said Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary.
Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the House, which last December passed an enforcement-only bill that would subject the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States to felony charges as well as deportation.
Frist said the Senate will send 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats to negotiate with the House, with seven of the Republicans and five Democrats coming from the Judiciary Committee. The remaining seven Republicans will be chosen by Frist and remaining seven Democrats chosen by Reid.
At least one oppoenent of the compromise measure, Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, will be among the remaining seven Republicans appointed to the committee, spokesman Don Stewart said.
Frist said a "considerable" number of amendments would be debated when the Senate begins debating the bill early next week.
It would be the most comprehensive rewrite of immigration laws since the so-called Simpson-Mazzoli bill some 20 years ago.
Reid acknowledged on the Senate floor Thursday morning that he "didn't get everything that I wanted" in the agreement, but said Frist didn't either. Reaching the agreement is "not easy with the political atmosphere," Reid said.
Reid had been taking some criticism for refusing to move forward on the bill after complaining that Republicans were trying to undermine it with amendments and insisting that Democrats be allowed to have a say in who serves on the conference committee.
Republicans, too, have had opposition from conservatives to the compromise proposal. These critics consider its path to citizenship provision for illegal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of future guest workers to be tantamount to "amnesty."
They've also had to contend with fallout from opposition to the House bill that triggered nationwide protests that drew hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas and hundreds more in other cities and small communities.
Presidential and midyear politics have been a subtext to the immigration debate. Frist and Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), one of the architects of the legalization proposal, are prominent in speculation for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.
The compromise bill the Senate will consider builds on legislation approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee 12-6, with four Republicans voting with Democrats to approve the measure.
That measure absorbed a bill drafted by McCain and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., that called for allowing illegal immigrants to work toward becoming legal permanent residents.
President Bush had helped accelerate progress on the bill after meeting with a bipartisan group of senators last month and stating clearer support for allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
"Business and labor, Democrats and Republicans, religious leaders and the American people strongly support our plan to strengthen borders, provide a path to earned citizenship for those undocumented workers who are here and put in place a realistic guest worker program for the future," Kennedy said.
Both Parties Courting The 'Illegals'
Yup!GunnyL said:And this is the WHOLE problem in a nutshell. Neither party wants to alienate potential votes.
GunnyL said:And this is the WHOLE problem in a nutshell. Neither party wants to alienate potential votes.
Anything is possible. At the same time, I would say that if Bush gets on Monday and says they are going to secure the border, first with the National Guard, then replacing them with combo of fences/electronic measures, THEN those here will be addressed, I think the right would calm down.William Joyce said:They're saying the immigration issue could be what actually creates a third party. About time. We can have the communists (Democrats), the socialists (Republicans), and the conseravtives (how about... The America Party?)
A Final Word for Now [John Podhoretz]
There are really three immigration debates. There is the cultural debate, there is the economic debate, and there is the security debate. On matters of culture, I believe as everybody else here does that our immigration policy makes no sense if it is not directed at the process of turning non-Americans into Americans through the instruction of English, knowledge of civics and American history, and helping to instill a sense of pride and commitment to the country.
On economic matters, I agree that if immigrants are not of net benefit to the country, it makes no sense for us to allow newcomers to do harm in this way and here, in my opinion, the case made by restrictionists is by far the weakest. On security matters, an uncontrolled border is clearly unacceptable, and a panoply of measures, including a border fence, is more than called for.
As for dealing with the illegals already here, there's a sense in which this debate has been radicalized to such an extent that the Right won't be satisfied with a policy that does not explicitly advocate expulsion all other policies being dubbed "amnesty" and therefore illegitimate while the Left refuses to consider any policy other than special-treatment affirmative-action line-jumping legalization. In other words, there is nothing our politicians can do, absolutely nothing, to satisfy the activists because neither extreme will be reflected in any kind of law or policy that emerges even from a Washington energized to deal with them.
If a more sober reckoning of political reality does not intrude here, the Right will hurtle headlong toward schism, division, a third party and all sorts of other "pox on all your houses" actions. The cost of this is what I detail in the direst parts of my book Can She Be Stopped? the easy transfer of power on Capitol Hill and the White House to the Democrats, and particularly to Hillary Clinton.
It's doubtful the policies she will follow as president on immigration will please anyone on the Right. It's certain that the policies she will follow on courts, on social issues, on foreign policy, on taxes, on regulation and on almost everything else you can think of will be deeply displeasing to people on the Right. And then, as a result of the pursuit of an impossible policy of purity on immigration, the country and the world will suffer the consequences.
The potential for self-destruction is terrifying. The potential for grave national harm is worse. Please, you guys, pull back from the edge.
