Senate coalition preserves key terms of immigration legislation
BY DAVE MONTGOMERY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The Senate gave a bipartisan show of support Tuesday for the kind of comprehensive approach to immigration law that President Bush endorsed Monday night, rejecting attempts to limit the legislation to border enforcement only and to kill a proposed guest worker program.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly - 69-28 - to preserve the proposed guest worker program. It would bring up to 325,000 more low-skilled foreign workers into the country each year.
The Senate also voted 55-40 to reject an amendment sponsored by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., that would have delayed the guest worker program and terms giving illegal immigrants who are already in the United States a path to legal status until after border security had been greatly enhanced.
The Isakson amendment was a "huge test vote" that demonstrated how broad bipartisan support of comprehensive legislation is in the Senate, according to Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., the bill's co-sponsor. Thirty-six Democrats, 18 Republicans and the Senate's lone independent voted against the amendment.
Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., voiced confidence that the Senate will pass an immigration bill by the Memorial Day recess. That will set up contentious and unpredictable House-Senate negotiations to reconcile the Senate's differences with a bill that the House of Representatives passed that calls only for tough border-enforcement measures.
"This body must and will act," Frist said as senators began considering more than 20 amendments.
Bush endorsed a comprehensive approach to overhauling immigration law in his prime-time TV speech Monday. That put him squarely on the Senate's side of the looming House-Senate showdown.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., praised the president for a "commendable job" in his speech, but challenged him to denounce the House bill's enforcement-only approach.
In his Oval Office address Monday, Bush announced plans to dispatch up to 6,000 National Guard troops to help secure the Mexican border over the next two years and urged Congress to enact legislation that includes the key elements of the Senate bill. Supporters said the president's involvement gave the bill a new momentum that could help drive it past formidable election-year opposition.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., sponsored the move to kill the guest worker program, arguing that it would wrest jobs from U.S. workers. The program has broad support from business and humanitarian groups, who say it would fill a chronic labor shortage and provide legal protections for foreign workers who otherwise would enter the country illegally.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said a guest worker program would create a "permanent underclass" of cheap labor. But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a leading architect of the Senate bill, warned that the rest of the measure "would not be applicable or enforceable" if the guest worker plan were stripped out.
The Senate has scheduled debate on the measure through next week, but could shorten that timetable if leaders decide that further amendments would be pointless. One key test, expected later this week, will come on a proposal to eliminate a requirement that one group of illegal immigrants - those in the country two to five years - would have to leave briefly before being eligible to participate in the guest worker plan.
The so-called "touch back" was included as a compromise to soften Republican opposition. An earlier version of the bill allowed nearly all illegal immigrants in the country to get on track toward permanent legal status and U.S. citizenship without having to leave first.
Reid and other senior Democrats oppose the touch-back proposal.
Under the bill, illegal immigrants who've been in the United States at least five years could move toward legal status by working for six years, paying back taxes, passing background checks, learning English and paying $2,000 fines. Those who've been in the country two years or less would be required to return home.
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