In Senate, 68-32 vote OKs immigration bill

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., embraces Astrid Silva of Las Vegas on Thursday at the Capitol. Silva’s family came to the U.S. from Mexico illegally, and Reid says her story has served as an inspiration during his work on immigration. Reid read letters from Silva on the Senate floor before Thursday’s vote.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., embraces Astrid Silva of Las Vegas on Thursday at the Capitol. Silva’s family came to the U.S. from Mexico illegally, and Reid says her story has served as an inspiration during his work on immigration. Reid read letters from Silva on the Senate floor before Thursday’s vote.

WASHINGTON - The Senate passed the most significant revision of U.S. immigration law in a generation in a bipartisan vote that the bill’s backers say will put pressure on the Republican-controlled House to act.

The measure, passed 68-32, would create a path to citizenship for about 11 million illegal aliens now in the U.S., a priority for the Senate’s majority Democrats. It would direct $46.3 billion toward securing the border with Mexico - the costliest plan ever - added to gain Republican support.

Fourteen Republicans joined all of the chamber’s Democrats in voting for the bill. On the final vote and two earlier procedural votes, Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas voted “yes,” while Arkansas’ Republican senator, John Boozman, voted “no.”

Pryor said the bill provided for tough border-security measures and required people who had entered the country illegally to pay fines and back taxes.

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AP

Sen. John McCain (left) and Sen. Charles Schumer — two of the authors of the immigration overhaul bill crafted by the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight — greet each other Thursday on Capitol Hill.

“The people of Arkansas don’t want an easy ride for the folks who have broken the law,” he said. “They are paying the price for breaking the law.”

Boozman said that the border-security measures called for in the bill would curtail new illegal immigration only by 25 percent,resulting in 5 million illegal border crossings in five years. He said the bill did not provide assurances that the border would be secure before allowing people here illegally a path to citizenship.

“If you don’t protect the border, you’ll have a massive inflow,” Boozman said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., disagreed, saying the “legislation will be good for America’s national security as well as its economic security.”

“It makes unprecedented investments in border security, it cracks down on crooked employers who exploit and abuse immigrant workers, and it reforms our legal immigration system,” he said.

President Barack Obama said in a statement after the vote, “Today, the Senate did its job. It’s now up to the House to do the same.”

He coupled praise for the Senate’s action with a plea for resolve by supporters, saying,“Now is the time when opponents will try their hardest to pull this bipartisan effort apart so they can stop common-sense reform from becoming a reality. We cannot let that happen.”

The product of months of negotiations, Senate Bill 744 is encountering resistance in the House. Republicans in that chamber strongly oppose the citizenship path.Many Republicans prefer a piecemeal approach requiring proof that border-security measures are working before lawmakers would consider any form of legal status for illegal aliens.

“We stand ready to sit down and negotiate with you,” Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the bill’s co-authors, said regarding House members.

Republicans in the House, including Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers, said the Senate bill did not provide stringent security at the border.

“I don’t think it’s got a chance in the House without airtight, bona fide security measures,” Womack said.

Minutes after the Senate vote, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement that he had “concerns” about the measure.

“The bill repeats many of the same mistakes made in the 1986 immigration law,” Goodlatte said. It doesn’t “adequately address the interior enforcement of our immigration laws and allows the executive branch to waive many, if not most, of the bill’s requirements.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., agreed.

“The amnesty will occur, but the enforcement is not going to occur, and the policies for future immigration are not serving the national interest,” he said.

Vice President Joe Biden presided over the Senate vote. After he announced the vote total, chants of “yes we can!” broke out in the visitors’ gallery.

Several Arkansas groups and individuals, including the Little Rock-based Poultry Federation, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Zulma Toro and Roman Catholic Bishop Anthony Taylor of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock, also cheered the bill’s passage.

“Arkansas’ business and industry understand that immigration reform is the right thing to do and now is the right time to do it,” said Randy Zook, president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/Associated Industries of Arkansas.

“This bill is not what we would have crafted,” said Mireya Reith, executive director of Arkansas United Community Coalition, a pro-immigration advocacy group. “However the path to citizenship - the heart of this bill - is largely intact.”

U.S. immigration law hasn’t been substantially revamped since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a law that made 3 million illegal aliens eligible for legal status. That measure created a market for fraudulent documentation, and illegal immigration soared, discouraging later efforts to provide legal status.

A 2007 immigration plan died in the Senate and wasn’t considered in the House. The prospects for passage ofa bipartisan bill are greater this time because some Republicans see the issue as a way to boost the party’s appeal with Hispanic voters, 71 percent of whom supported Obama in November.

The measure’s final passage “gets it out of the Senate with the wind at its back,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican co-sponsoring the bill, said Thursday. “Amnesty was the word of the day in 2006 and 2007. Now there’s been a sea change. Legal status for the 11 million is seen as a practical solution.”

Senators amended the bill Wednesday to strengthen its border-security provisions. The measure would double the U.S. Border Patrol’s size by adding 20,000 agents, require 700 miles of fencing at the Mexico border, and add unmanned aerial drones to help police the border.

All employers would have to check workers’ legal status with an e-verify system, and a visa entry and exit system would be required at all airports and seaports.

Those provisions would have to be in place before any illegal alien could gain permanent legal status, known as a green card.

The measure approved by the Judiciary Committee included $8.3 billion in security costs. The amendment adopted Wednesday added $38 billion, including $30 billion for new border-control agents.

Still, most Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, voted against the bill. McConnell, who is seeking re-election in 2014, said Thursday that he isn’t convinced the measure would secure the U.S. border and deter future illegal immigration.

“I had wanted very much to support a reform to our immigration law,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “So it’s with a great deal of regret, for me at least, that the final bill didn’t turn out to be something that I could support.”

While the bill’s border-security elements consumed the vast majority of floor debate, the nearly 1,000-page legislation also would revamp U.S. visa programs. It would create a program for low-skilled, nonfarm workers through an agreement between the U.S. Chamberof Commerce, the nation’s biggest business-lobbying group, and the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation.

“This bill includes input from almost every member of this body,” said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat and an author of the bill. “That’s what makes this bill strong.”

He said the measure drew backing from a range of groups including farmers, technology companies and organizations supporting rights for illegal aliens.

The Senate bill, unveiled in April, was drafted after months of talks between four Republican and four Democratic senators. The group’s Democratic members are Schumer, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado. The Republican members are Graham, McCain, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Flake spoke from personal experience in explaining his support for the bill, recalling time he spent as a youth working alongside family members and “undocumented migrant labor, largely from Mexico, who worked harder than we did under conditions much more difficult than we endured.”

Since then, he said, “I have harbored a feeling of admiration and respect for those who have come to risk life and limb and sacrifice so much to provide a better life for themselves and their families.”

In addition to the four Republicans who helped draft the bill, Republicans voting for the bill were Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire,Jeffrey Chiesa of New Jersey, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Dean Heller of Nevada, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The Judiciary Committee spent three weeks considering more than 100 amendments to the measure in May. Four of the bill’s authors are members of the panel, and they banded together to defeat proposals from both parties that could imperil support for the measure.

That included a proposal from Texas Republican Ted Cruz that would have eliminated the path to citizenship for illegal aliens.

House leaders said their chamber will consider its own legislation on immigration, though details haven’t been worked out on how to proceed.

“The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday in Washington. “Immigration reform has to be grounded in real border security.”

Boehner has said he won’t take immigration legislation to the House floor unless it has support from most of the chamber’s Republicans. He has turned to Goodlatte to set the pace for the House’s efforts.

Goodlatte prefers dividing immigration legislation into smaller pieces. So far, the judiciary panel has approved measures setting up a new farm guest-worker program; strengthening enforcement of immigration laws, and expanding an electronic employment-verification program. The panel on Thursday was considering visas for high-skilled foreign workers.

The bills approved by committee Republicans haven’t attracted Democratic support, in contrast with Boehner’s position that immigration overhaul should pass with a majority of both Republicans and Democrats.

“The path forward in the House is going to look different than in the Senate,” said Angela Maria Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-aligned research group in Washington.

Kelley said the fact that the House hasn’t drafted a proposal to address the 11 million people now illegally in the U.S. was “a pretty glaring omission in terms of effective policy.”

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Wednesday that the Senate bill was “dead on arrival” in the House because most Republicans in the Senate opposed it.

“Why in the world would a majority of Republicans embrace something in the House that a majority of Republicans in the Senate didn’t embrace?” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hunter, Laura Litvan and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News; by Alex Daniels of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and by David Espo, Erica Werner and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/28/2013

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