[The senators are expected to call for normalizing the status of
the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, including allowing those
with otherwise clean criminal records to obtain legal work permits, officials
said. The group is also likely to endorse stricter border controls and a better
system for employers to verify the immigration status of workers.]
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Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES) –
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) speaks at President
Obama’s inauguration on Monday.
Schumer is one of a bipartisan group of senators
developing broad principles for
overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.
|
A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad
principles for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, representing the most
substantive bipartisan effort toward major legislation in years.
The three Democrats and three Republicans, who have been meeting
quietly in recent months, plan to announce a final agreement as early as next
Friday.
The move would amount to the first tentative step toward
comprehensive immigration reform after long-standing gridlock on the issue. The
new effort was spurred in large part by the growing influence of Latino voters
who strongly backed President Obama and other Democrats in November.
Obama has also called immigration reform one of his top
legislative priorities and is launching his own public campaign on the issue
next week in Nevada. But a significant number of Americans, particularly within
the Republican Party, remain opposed to laws that would make it easier for
illegal immigrants to stay in the country or obtain legal status.
The senators are expected to call for normalizing the status of
the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, including allowing those
with otherwise clean criminal records to obtain legal work permits, officials
said. The group is also likely to endorse stricter border controls and a better
system for employers to verify the immigration status of workers.
It was not clear, however, whether the final agreement will offer
guidance on perhaps the thorniest issue in the immigration debate: what
mechanism illegal immigrants could use to pursue full citizenship.
“We have basic agreement on many of the core principles,” Senate
Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the group, said this
week. “Now we have to draft it. It takes time.”
Other senators involved in the talks are Democrats Charles E.
Schumer (N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Republicans Lindsey O. Graham
(S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).
Two others, Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet
(D-Colo.), have also been involved in some of the discussions.
Congressional aides stress that a final agreement has not yet been
reached. But the negotiations mark the most in-depth immigration talks
involving members of both parties since a similar attempt broke down in 2010
without producing a bill.
McCain, who spearheaded an earlier failed effort in 2007, said
Republican attitudes have dramatically shifted since the party’s losses at the
polls in November. Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote among
Latinos and Asians, and a growing number of GOP leaders believe that action on
immigration is necessary to expand the party’s appeal to minority groups.
“Obviously, it’s had a very distinct impression,” said McCain, who
lost his own bid for the White House in 2008. “It’s time to move forward on
this.”
But, he added, “I don’t claim that it’s going to be easy.”
The accelerated pace signals that immigration reform is expected
to be one of Congress’s highest priorities, and it comes as the White House
prepares to launch its own public campaign on the issue.
Obama will travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday to speak about the need
to “fix the broken immigration system this year,” the administration announced
Friday. Nevada has a rapidly growing
number of Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly supported Obama’s reelection.
Obama also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
on Friday, and aides said he vowed that immigration reform will be his “top
priority.”
“What has been absent in the time [since] he put principles
forward is a willingness by Republicans to move forward with comprehensive immigration
reform,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. “He hopes that
dynamic has changed and there are indications what was once a bipartisan effort
to push forward . . . will again be a bipartisan effort to do so.”
Past efforts begun amid similarly high hopes have sputtered.
In 2007, a bill crafted in the Senate died after failing to win
support of 60 members despite backing from President George W. Bush. Many
Republicans, and some centrist Democrats, opposed that effort because it
offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
In 2010, extended negotiations between Graham and Schumer broke
down without producing legislation.
The timetable would aim for a bill to be written by March or April
and potentially considered for final passage in the Senate as early as the
summer. Proponents think a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate would make it
easier to win adoption in the GOP-held House.
The working group’s principles are expected to address stricter
border control, better employer verification of workers’ immigration status,
new visas for temporary agriculture workers and expanding the number of visas
available for skilled engineers. They would also include a call to normalize
the status of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants and help young
people who were brought to the country illegally as children become citizens.
But obstacles abound. For instance, Rubio has said he thinks
immigrants who came to the country illegally should be able to earn a work
permit but should be required to seek citizenship through existing avenues
after those who have come here legally.
Many Democrats and immigration advocates fear Rubio’s approach
would result in wait-times stretching for decades, creating a class of
permanent legal residents for whom the benefits of citizenship appear
unattainable. They have pushed to create new pathways to citizenship
specifically available to those who achieve legal residency as part of a reform
effort.
It is not yet clear whether the Senate group will endorse a
mechanism allowing such people to eventually become citizens — something Obama
is expected to champion. Schumer said it would be “relatively detailed” but
would not “get down into the weeds.”
A source close to Rubio said he joined the group in December at
the request of other members only after they agreed their effort would line up
with his own principles for reform. As a possible 2016 presidential contender
widely trusted on the right, Rubio could be key to moving the bipartisan
effort.
Rubio and other Republicans have said they would prefer to split
up a comprehensive immigration proposal into smaller bills that would be voted
on separately, but the White House will pursue comprehensive legislation that
seeks to reform the process in a single bill.
“I doubt if there will be a macro, comprehensive bill,” said Sen.
Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who supported the 2007 effort. “Anytime a bill’s more
than 500 pages, people start getting suspicious. If it’s 2,000 pages, they go
berserk.”
But Schumer said Friday that a single package will be key for
passage. “We’ll not get it done in pieces,” he said. “Every time you do a
piece, everyone says what about my piece, and you get more people opposing it.”
Eliseo Medina, secretary treasurer of the Service Employees
International Union, which spent millions recruiting Hispanic voters last year,
said immigration advocates expect Obama to be out front on the issue.
“The president needs to lead and then the Republicans have a
choice,” Medina said. “The best way to share the credit is for them to step up
and engage and act together with the president.”
