Senate 8 outline way to tackle immigration

A bipartisan group of senators (from left), Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announce that they have reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws during a news conference Monday at the Capitol in Washington.
A bipartisan group of senators (from left), Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announce that they have reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws during a news conference Monday at the Capitol in Washington.

— A bipartisan group of senators unveiled on Monday a set of principles for comprehensive immigration legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million aliens already in the country illegally, contingent on first securing the nation’s borders.

“Other bipartisan groups of senators have stood in the same spot before, trumpeting similar proposals,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., at a news conference with four other members of the group. “But we believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it done. The politics on this issue have been turned upside down. For the first time ever there’s more political risk in opposing immigration reform than in supporting it.”

The group said it hopes to have legislation drafted by March, and a vote before the August recess.

The plan marks significant progress on an issue that has, because of Republican opposition, stymied past efforts to rewrite immigration laws.

“It’s kind of like the pistol shot at the start of the race,” said Tamar Jacoby, president of Immigration Works USA, a Washington group that advocates overhauling the immigration laws. “There is a lot of work ahead.”

Details of the plan remain unresolved. The group, whose others are Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado and Republicans Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, has agreed on broad principles and hasn’t drafted a bill.

McCain, who helped lead former President George W. Bush’s failed immigration overhaul effort in 2007, called the pathway to citizenship the “most controversial piece of immigration reform,” saying the current situation amounts to “de facto amnesty” and that the illegal aliens deserve a chance to live legally in the country and ultimately become citizens.

“We have been too content for too long to allow individuals to mow our lawn, serve our food, clean our homes and even watch our children, while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that it’s not beneficial to our country to have these people hidden in the shadows.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said the agreement represented a “positive first step.” He has listed an immigration overhaul as among the Senate’s top legislative priorities.

A proposal would need the backing of at least one additional Republican to have the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate. Democrats control 55 votes in the 100-member chamber. The number of Republican backers needed would increase for every Democrat who opposed the plan.

The endeavor immediately got a cool reaction from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“This effort is too important to be written in a backroom and sent to the floor with a take-it-or-leave it approach,” McConnell said. “It needs to be done on a bipartisan basis and include ideas from both sides of the aisle.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said on the Senate floor, “No one should expect members of the Senate are just going to rubber-stamp what a group has met and decided.”

Still, the acknowledgment by some Republicans that a pathway to citizenship is necessary is cheering advocates of an overhauled immigration policy.

“I am the most optimistic I have been in quite some time,” Menendez said. The path to citizenship outlined in the proposal will be “an arduous pathway, but it will be a fair one,” he said.

The plan comes after a defeat for Republicans in the 2012 presidential election that has compelled the party to seek ways to make inroads with Hispanic voters. The rapidly growing voting bloc cast 71 percent of its votes for President Barack Obama in November.

“The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens,” McCain said. “And we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens, but this is a pre-eminent issue with those citizens.”

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio is among the Republicans who have said the party needs to find a more positive approach to immigration policy.

Boehner “welcomes the work of leaders like Senator Rubio on this issue and is looking forward to learning more about the proposal in the coming days,” spokesman Michael Steel said in an e-mailed statement.

Some Republicans complain of what they call amnesty for people who entered the country illegally.

The Senate group is calling for tougher border security and enforcement before providing a path to citizenship for illegal aliens already in the U.S. Those people would face a prolonged process to remain in the U.S. legally.

The proposal would boost the number of unmanned aerial vehicles watching for illegal border crossings, mandate completion of a system to track whether individuals entering the U.S. on temporary visas have left the country, and require people in the country without authorization to pay fines and back taxes.

It would strengthen prohibitions against racial profiling and exempt people who entered the country as minors from many of the plan’s requirements for individuals who entered the country illegally as adults. The proposal would create a separate path to citizenship for agricultural workers.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration “welcomes” the Senate group’s proposal and said it “mirrors” Obama’s plan. The U.S. is “at a moment now” where “support seems to be coalescing,” Carney said.

Obama plans to travel to Nevada today to advocate for legislation in a state with a sizable share of Hispanic voters who were instrumental in his re-election.

Bush’s 2007 attempt to change the immigration system, including a pathway to citizenship for aliens, and Obama’s effort in 2010 failed amid public anger over unchecked immigration and opposition from Republicans who contended that the plans rewarded illegal entry.

The House’s informal immigration working group, which has met privately for almost four years, includes Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican; Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat; and John Carter, a Texas Republican.

The issue of illegal aliens resonates with Hispanic voters. Two-thirds of Hispanic people in the U.S. have a friend or family member who is in the country illegally, according to a post-campaign analysis by the polling firm Latino Decisions.

“When we talk about deporting undocumented immigrants, Latino voters connect that statement to someone they know in their personal lives,” said Stanford University professor Gary Segura, who conducted the analysis.

Still, it remains to be seen how many House Republicans would support anything other than an enforcement only approach.

“Illegal immigration and any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is a form of amnesty and is opposed by most Americans because it will harm American workers, students, taxpayers and voters,” William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said in a statement. The group opposed the 2007 and 2010 overhaul efforts.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement that there are “a lot of questions about how this would work, what it would cost, and how it will prevent illegal immigration in the future. This will have a huge impact on the American people, and so we have to carefully evaluate its impact.”

In Arizona, Phoenix civil rights lawyer Danny Ortega said issues remain, such as determining when the border is secured. Still, he said the proposal put the nation on the right path.

“America through this legislation is beginning to re-establish its core values,” said Ortega, former chairman of the National Council of La Raza. The proposal “recognizes the contribution of immigrants, and not only that but recognizes that we cannot survive economically without them.”

Michael Seifert, a community organizer with the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network in Brownsville, Texas, said, “Comprehensive immigration reform would be an extraordinary moment for our communities.” The group is a coalition of nonprofit organizations that advocate for low income residents.

Many families in the four county Rio Grande Valley include a mix of U.S. citizens, illegal aliens and those with temporary work permits, Seifert said. “It’s not as simple as just a bunch of people without the proper papers.” Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hunter, Lisa Lerer, Mark Silva, Roger Runningen, Roxana Tiron, David Mildenberg and Amanda J. Crawford of Bloomberg News; by Ashley Parker of The New York Times; and by Erica Werner, Julie Pace and Luis Alonso Lugo of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/29/2013

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