GOP bill focuses on border enforcement

Conservative Republican senators on Thursday introduced a bill bristling with immigration enforcement measures, the latest in a broad range of efforts across government to crack down on illegal immigration after the Senate’s failure earlier this summer to pass a broader overhaul.

The bill would tighten enforcement on the border, in the country’s interior and at work sites. It would make it easier for agents to seize smugglers’ cars at the border, mandate jail time for individuals who overstay their visas -- currently 40% of all people here illegally -- and turn closed military bases into detention facilities.

The bill’s sponsors, who include both strong supporters and staunch opponents of the recently failed legislation, said the legislation was meant to restore government credibility on immigration enforcement and thereby smooth the path to comprehensive overhaul.

“It’s a place people can go to see what we mean when we say ‘enforcement,’ ” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who described the bill as “a compendium of all the law enforcement-related things we thought were important in the debate.”

The new measure comes as momentum is building behind bolstering enforcement measures at all levels of government. The Bush administration is to unveil a rule making it tougher for businesses to hire illegal immigrants.

And an upcoming report is expected to show that state and local governments introduced record numbers of immigration initiatives in the first six months of 2007.

Lawmakers and others who want tighter restrictions on immigration contend that if existing laws are more strictly applied, illegal immigrants will eventually leave of their own accord. But the rapid proliferation of enforcement measures concerns immigrant rights advocates.

“It feels like a tsunami coming at us, and we’re standing on the beach with a snorkel and fins,” said Angela Kelley of the National Immigration Forum. “It means there will be a period of time where people will have to feel some pain.”

She and other critics denounced the new bill, which features tougher enforcement provisions than the bipartisan compromise legislation voted down in June. Several likened it to a 2005 House bill championed by then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Ohio) that sparked nationwide protests in 2006.

“It’s Sensenbrenner on steroids,” Kelley said.

The new bill does not classify illegal immigrants as felons, as that House bill did, but it does make fraudulent use of a Social Security number a felony. Advocates fear that the estimated 6 million to 7 million illegal immigrants in the workforce would be barred from any future legalization program.

Kyl and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both authors of the defeated immigration bill, cosponsored the new legislation with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and one of their former opponents in the immigration debate, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

Kyl said he did not expect the bill to pass in its current form, but anticipated that lawmakers would use it as a reference, pulling individual sections to introduce as amendments to other bills.

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nicole.gaouette@latimes.com