January 12, 2013
by Julia Preston
WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week.
Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one
comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some
Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately
addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly
skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of
their party to accept.
The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow
immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day,
the officials said.
Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun
control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year,
White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly
working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties
believe that the early months of his second term offer the best
prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue.
Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address
early next month, administration officials said. The White House will
argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as
many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back
taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal
status, the officials said.
The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal
status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and
allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of
guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.
A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a
comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as
March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the
keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials
and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of
them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said.
“This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions.
A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first
term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath
over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and
opponents say conditions are significantly different now.
Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here.
Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record
numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos
said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies
against illegal immigrants.
After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A.
Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive,
practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral
demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on
tough enforcement.
Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing
less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic
that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight.
“Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild
their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de
Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.”
Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address
on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration
system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must
take on.
Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group
of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have
participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported
comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who
is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco
Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month.
Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No.
2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of
Colorado.
Basic tenets for the bill, Mr. Schumer said, were that it would be
comprehensive and would offer eventual citizenship for illegal
immigrants who follow a prolonged process to correct their status.
“This is a bottom line,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Thursday.
“The Democrats have made it clear we will not accept a bill without a
direct path to earned citizenship.” He said senators from both parties
had been “pleasantly surprised” at how rapidly the talks had proceeded.
Mr. Rubio, a Cuban-American who has emerged as a star in his party, is
making immigration one of his primary issues. He has advocated taking
changes in pieces, arguing that lawmakers will get better results if the
politically and practically tangled problems of the immigration system
are handled separately.
Mr. Rubio has been preparing a bill that would provide legal status
specifically for young illegal immigrants, known as Dreamers, who came
to the United States as children.
Mr. Rubio said Thursday that the piecemeal approach was “not a line in
the sand” for him. But he said he would insist that any legalization
measure should not be unfair to immigrants who played by the rules and
applied to become residents through legal channels.
His proposals would allow illegal immigrants to gain temporary status so
that they could remain in the country and work. Then they would be sent
to the back of the line in the existing system to apply to become
permanent residents, without any special path to citizenship.
Mr. Rubio said he hoped to rally Republicans to support changes.
Speaking of Latinos, he said, “We are going to have a struggle speaking
to a whole segment of the population about our principles of limited
government and free enterprise if they think we don’t want them here.”
In the Republican-controlled House, the future of a comprehensive bill remains unclear.
Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who follows
immigration issues, said he remained opposed to “amnesty of any kind.”
He said that the Obama administration had been lax on enforcement, and
that he would “continue working to secure our borders and enforce
existing immigration law.”
But groups backing the overhaul say they are bigger and better organized
than in the past. Last month, the labor movement, including the
A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other sometimes-warring factions, affirmed a common
strategy. Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would work
with labor, Latino and church organizations to pass the overhaul this
year.
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