Senate Takes New Tack on Immigration

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist late Wednesday offered a new plan to overhaul U.S. immigration laws that would require as many as 3 million illegal immigrants to leave the country in order to apply for legal status and eventual citizenship.

Aides to the Tennessee Republican said a majority of GOP senators would support the plan, ending a stalemate that threatened to prevent action on the issue. But any bill that comes out of the Senate would have to be reconciled with a harsher measure passed by the House. It was not immediately clear how any legislation that passed would be enforced.

The “path to citizenship” issue has been the key point of disagreement among GOP lawmakers.

Senate Republicans had worked frantically for two days to build support for the latest proposal -- drafted by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) -- which would treat illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for more than five years differently than more recent arrivals.

Opponents insist that any provision giving legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. amounts to condoning illegal immigration and defying American laws. Proponents argue that foreign workers are vital to the economy and must be offered some hope of a secure future.

Democrats have refused to consider changes in the bill currently under debate, which was approved by the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee. That proposal would boost border enforcement, create a guest worker program with a path to legal status and offer the possibility of citizenship to immigrants who met certain requirements -- including learning English and paying back taxes.

The Democrats had been hoping to force Republicans to adopt that plan or fail in their effort to pass an immigration bill.

But Frist introduced the new measure and immediately filed a second motion to end debate -- parliamentary moves that would set up a vote on the Republican alternative no later than Friday.

Democrats said they needed time to study the plan but suggested they would not move to block its consideration.

“That would be great if we could end this acrimonious week on a high note, and we’ll not know that until we study this amendment,” said Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

The GOP leadership said a vote scheduled for today on the Judiciary Committee bill would fall short of the 60 votes needed for the measure to advance.

The Hagel-Martinez measure would divide illegal immigrants into three categories, with each treated differently in terms of the path to legal status and citizenship:

* Those who entered the country after January 2004 would have to return to their countries of origin; to come back to the U.S., they would have to apply under existing procedures.

* Illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. two to five years would have to apply for temporary visas and travel to a point of entry across the U.S. border as part of the process. Senators estimate about 3 million people are in this category.

* Illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. five years or more would be able to legalize their status and apply for citizenship without leaving.

Illegal immigrants applying for citizenship under the legislation would have to fulfill a string of requirements, including proving their work history, paying back taxes and fines, and learning American civics and English.

A Frist aide said the Hagel-Martinez proposal had the support of a majority of the chamber’s 55 Republicans.

Earlier in the day, Democrats had sounded hopeful that Republicans would decide to adopt the Judiciary Committee version, drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), which won approval last week with support from Republicans and Democrats.

“They will have to decide -- the Republican caucus -- whether they want to carry the responsibility for killing comprehensive immigration reform,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat, had told reporters.

Republicans and Democrats negotiated furiously behind closed doors throughout the day, meeting with immigrant advocates and church leaders to gauge the public impact of various proposals.

A more punitive bill that the House passed late last year has sparked street protests across the country, including a massive rally in downtown Los Angeles. More protests are planned for Monday.

In an effort to ease public concern over the House bill, its author, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), sent a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday saying his legislation had been misconstrued. At a news conference, Sensenbrenner pleaded with the Senate to pass its version of an immigration bill, suggesting he might be open to some changes when the two bills were combined.

“It is vitally important for the Senate to pass a bill,” he said. “The result of doing nothing would be the worst possible result of all worlds.” Republicans eager to increase their party’s support among Latinos have been concerned that the immigration debate could anger potential voters.

Senators are under pressure to vote on a bill by the end of the week, when they are scheduled to begin a two-week recess. Senators said postponing the vote until after recess could create insurmountable scheduling problems, including the delay of a must-pass budget measure to fund military operations in Iraq.

“I don’t know if you can ever muster all these forces again,” Durbin said. “To carve out another week or two [for debate] becomes problematic.... We may never see the bill again this year.”

Privately, some Republicans have expressed concern that if the Senate bill fails, the House bill will be left standing as the GOP position on immigration.

The House bill calls for building a 700-mile-long fence on the border and would make it a criminal offense, punishable by up to a year and a day in jail, to be in the U.S. without the proper papers.

It would also make it a crime to assist or encourage illegal immigrants to stay in the country, a provision opponents say could be used against social workers, hospital staff and priests. Church groups were prominent among the organizers of recent rallies nationwide.

Sensenbrenner insisted the provision had been misunderstood.

He said it was meant to target human traffickers bringing undocumented immigrants across the border and was drafted in response to requests from border state prosecutors looking for additional legal tools.

He said that helping undocumented immigrants stay in the U.S. was made a crime in 1986 immigration reform that was supported by the Catholic bishops group at the time.

“To our knowledge, prosecutors haven’t prosecuted priests, nuns or soup kitchen workers,” Sensenbrenner said. “It’s not the intention of HR4437 to throw good Samaritans in jail.” If the Senate passes an immigration bill, Sensenbrenner said, he expects that the two chambers will have trouble forging a compromise.

A big stumbling block to agreement would be the Senate’s proposed guest worker program, which would offer visas and the possibility of citizenship to about 400,000 low-skill workers, Sensenbrenner said.

A guest worker program is “not a nonstarter,” he said, but he added that “the best way to show compassion to illegal immigrants is to stop illegal immigration.”