Senate GOP poised to offer compromise on immigration bill
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans reached agreement last night on a compromise immigration measure that they believe will garner enough bipartisan support to break through a parliamentary impasse that has stymied progress on a high-stakes border security bill for two weeks.
Under the plan, the Senate would allow undocumented workers a path to lawful employment and citizenship if they could prove -- through work stubs, utility bills, or other documents -- that they have been in the country for five years. To attain citizenship, those immigrants would have to pay a $2,000 penalty, back taxes, learn English, undergo a criminal background check, and remain working for 11 years.
Those who have been here a shorter time would have to return to one of 16 designated ports of entry, such as El Paso, and apply for a new form of temporary work visa for low-skilled and unskilled workers. An additional provision still under consideration would disqualify illegal immigrants who have been in the country less than two years.
In a surprise move last night, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, went to the Senate floor with a parliamentary motion to send the compromise to the Senate Judiciary Committee for ratification, then scheduled a vote for tomorrow to cut off debate on that motion.
A final breakthrough was held back yesterday by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, who insisted that any substantive compromise wait until a showdown vote to cut off debate on a more lenient measure that was passed by the Judiciary Committee last week. Reid and other Democratic leaders hope to show they have 60 votes in support of that bill, written by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona. That showdown should come this morning, and if the bill's backers can break a possible filibuster, they could show that no compromise is needed that would fundamentally change the McCain-Kennedy bill.
As of last night, however, the vote to break a filibuster appeared almost certain to fall short of the 60 supporters needed -- in large part because of bruised Republican feelings over Reid's parliamentary tactics that have tied up the Senate for days. Even McCain said he would not bow to the Democrats' tactics and vote to end debate.
If the compromise fails, the Senate will leave Washington this weekend for a two-week spring recess with nothing to show for a fortnight of heated debate. That would allow organizers of a national protest Monday against a crackdown on illegal immigration to build pressure on lawmakers to support the McCain-Kennedy measure -- which would let virtually all illegal immigrants, no matter how long they have been in the United States, stay and work toward citizenship.
''If we don't get something worked out by sunrise, then the Senate Democrats are going to be cut out," warned Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, voicing the frustration of a GOP majority that has been outflanked by the Democratic leadership.
That was a remarkable turn of events for a Republican Congress much more accustomed to steamrolling the Democratic minority. In an extraordinary showdown yesterday, Frist assembled most of the 55 Republicans in the Senate chamber to castigate Reid's intransigence.
''I used to say this is another insufferable attempt of the other side to block, to obstruct, to postpone, to delay, but now I think it's beyond that," Frist protested.
Reid responded: ''The majority can move forward with a bill that will fix our borders and reform our immigration system or continue to stonewall this. It's in the eyes of the beholder who's stonewalling."
There is virtual unanimity in the Senate that the immigration system is broken. Of the several immigration bills that have been drafted, all would beef up border patrol, strengthen rules against employing illegal immigrants and the penalties for businesses that violate those rules, and create tamper-proof identification cards to curb forgeries by job-seekers.
