Senate tackles border bill again

Senators seeking to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws urged fellow lawmakers Sunday to move forward this week with a plan that would strengthen enforcement along U.S. borders and then launch provisions for undocumented workers to stay legally in this country.

“There has to be detention of people coming across the border,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a supporter of the bill. “So there will be border enforcement, 3,500 additional border patrol, before any other part of the bill goes into place. People don’t understand that.”

Feinstein’s remarks came as the Senate prepares for a possible showdown this week on the fiercely contested effort to overhaul U.S. immigration policy. On Sunday, lawmakers made various predictions of the outcome.

A Tuesday procedural vote to reconsider the bill -- which was shelved this month in a dispute over amendments -- requires 60 votes in the Senate, which is divided over giving legal status to 12 million illegal workers.

“We’ll see if between the two parties we have 60 votes,” Feinstein said on “Fox News Sunday.”

She added: “And I’m hopeful that we will.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) predicted that the bill would prevail, but Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) maintained it was losing support among the public and key senators.

“We need to go back, reevaluate it and create something we can be proud of,” said Sessions, who argued that the measure would be too easy on illegal immigrants. He continued: “We’re going to use every effort to slow this process down and continue to hold up the bill.”

The immigration bill ran into problems this month with some senators who said it did not go far enough in securing borders. To revive the effort, supporters agreed to accept many new amendments, and advocates on all sides are pushing hard.

Some critics of the bill have said it would amount to amnesty to create a process for immigrants now here illegally to achieve legal permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship.

The measure also proposes to enhance border-control technology and require tamper-proof identification cards for guest workers.

President Bush used his weekly radio address Saturday to stir support for the bill, describing it as “an historic opportunity to uphold America’s tradition of welcoming” immigrants.

“With this program in place, employers will have a practical system to fill jobs Americans are not doing -- and foreign workers will have a legal way to apply for them,” he said. He called the status quo “unacceptable.”

Some advocates for immigrants have grown uncomfortable with efforts to increase legalization hurdles and to emphasize worker skills over family ties in determining who can immigrate.

Organized labor is also split, with some unions wary of a stronger guest worker program. The AFL-CIO last week formally came out against the bill.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said on “Fox News Sunday”: “I’m not committed to voting for the final product. The wheels may come off. But I am committed to trying.”

Kennedy said the public recognized the issue was complex: “The American people know that we can’t have bumper-sticker solutions. The cliches, slogans that we hear on the Senate floor are not going to solve our problem. All this problem will do is get worse if we do nothing.”

If the bill gets past procedural hurdles and is approved by the Senate in a vote tentatively scheduled for Friday, it would move on to the House, where a similarly raucous debate awaits.

jonathan.peterson@

latimes.com