White House, senators launching immigration push

Jan 26, 4:55 AM EST– WASHINGTON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama will launch a cam­paign next week aimed at over­haul­ing the nation’s flawed immi­gra­tion sys­tem and cre­at­ing legal sta­tus for mil­lions, as a bipar­ti­san Sen­ate group nears agree­ment on achiev­ing the same goals.

The pro­pos­als from Obama and law­mak­ers will mark the start of what is expected to be a con­tentious and emo­tional process with deep polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Latino vot­ers over­whelm­ingly backed Obama in the 2012 elec­tion, leav­ing Repub­li­cans grap­pling for a way to regain their stand­ing with an increas­ingly pow­er­ful pool of voters.

The pres­i­dent will press his case for immi­gra­tion changes dur­ing a trip to Las Vegas Tues­day. The Sen­ate work­ing group is also aim­ing to out­line its pro­pos­als next week, accord­ing to a Sen­ate aide.

Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials say Obama’s second-term immi­gra­tion push will be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the prin­ci­ples he out­lined dur­ing his first four years in office but failed to act on. He is expected to revive his little-noticed 2011 immi­gra­tion “blue­print,” which calls for a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship for ille­gal immi­grants that includes pay­ing fines and back taxes; increased bor­der secu­rity; manda­tory penal­ties for busi­nesses that employ unau­tho­rized immi­grants; and improve­ments to the legal immi­gra­tion sys­tem, includ­ing giv­ing green cards to high-skilled work­ers and lift­ing caps on legal immi­gra­tion for the imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­bers of U.S. citizens.

“What has been absent in the time since he put those prin­ci­ples for­ward has been a will­ing­ness by Repub­li­cans, gen­er­ally speak­ing, to move for­ward with com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform,” White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said. “What he hopes is that that dynamic has changed.”

The polit­i­cal dynamic does appear to have shifted fol­low­ing the Novem­ber elec­tion. Despite mak­ing lit­tle progress on immi­gra­tion in his first term, Obama won more than 70 per­cent of the Latino vote, in part because of the con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions on immi­gra­tion that Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney staked out dur­ing the GOP pri­mary. Latino vot­ers accounted for 10 per­cent of the elec­torate in November.

The pres­i­dent met pri­vately Fri­day morn­ing with the Con­gres­sional His­panic Cau­cus to dis­cuss his next steps on immi­gra­tion. Among those in the meet­ing was Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., who said Obama told law­mak­ers “immi­gra­tion reform is his num­ber one leg­isla­tive priority.”

That could bump back the president’s efforts to seek leg­is­la­tion enact­ing stricter gun laws, another issue he has vowed to make a top sec­ond term priority.

The Sen­ate immi­gra­tion group is also press­ing for quick action, aim­ing to draft a bill by March and pass leg­is­la­tion in their cham­ber by August, said the aide, who requested anonymity in order to dis­cuss pri­vate delib­er­a­tions. The Republican-controlled House would also need to pass the leg­is­la­tion before it went to the White House for the president’s signature.

Sen­ate law­mak­ers work­ing on the immi­gra­tion effort include Democ­rats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illi­nois and Robert Menen­dez of New Jer­sey; and Repub­li­cans John McCain of Ari­zona, Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­olina and Marco Rubio of Florida, accord­ing to Sen­ate aides.

Demo­c­rat Michael Ben­net of Col­orado, and Repub­li­cans Jeff Flake of Ari­zona and Mike Lee of Utah have also been involved. It’s not clear whether all those involved will sign on to the prin­ci­ples the group hopes to roll out next week.

Those prin­ci­ples are expected to include a process toward legal­iz­ing the sta­tus of unau­tho­rized immi­grants already in the coun­try; bor­der secu­rity; ver­i­fi­ca­tion mea­sures for employ­ers hir­ing work­ers and ways for more tem­po­rary work­ers to be admit­ted into the country.

It’s unclear whether the group will back the path­way to full cit­i­zen­ship that the pres­i­dent is seek­ing. Schumer and Gra­ham have pre­vi­ously sup­ported requir­ing ille­gal immi­grants to admit they broke the law, per­form com­mu­nity ser­vice, pay fines and back taxes, pass back­ground checks and learn Eng­lish before going to the back of the line of immi­grants already in the sys­tem in order to legal­ize their immi­gra­tion status.

Sev­eral of the sen­a­tors nego­ti­at­ing the immi­gra­tion prin­ci­ples are vet­er­ans of the failed com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform effort under then-President George W. Bush. That process col­lapsed in 2007 when it came up well-short of the needed votes in the Sen­ate, a bit­ter out­come for Bush and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Democ­rats’ leader on the legislation.

Some Repub­li­cans still lament that result as a missed oppor­tu­nity for the party that could have set the GOP on a dif­fer­ent path to reach more Latino voters.

Rubio is a rel­a­tive new­comer to Sen­ate nego­ti­a­tions on the issue, but he’s seen as a ris­ing star in his party and a poten­tial 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. As a charis­matic young His­panic leader his pro­pos­als on immi­gra­tion have attracted wide notice in recent weeks. And as a con­ser­v­a­tive favorite, unlike McCain or Gra­ham, his stamp of approval could be crit­i­cal to draw­ing in other con­ser­v­a­tive lawmakers.

A Repub­li­can aide said that Rubio has made clear in his inter­ac­tions with the Sen­ate group that he couldn’t sign on to pro­pos­als that devi­ated from the prin­ci­ples he him­self has been lay­ing out in recent media inter­views, includ­ing bor­der secu­rity first, a guest-worker pro­gram, more visas for high-tech work­ers and enforce­ment in the workplace.

As for the ille­gal immi­grants already in the coun­try, Rubio would have them pay a fine and back taxes, show they have not com­mit­ted crimes, prove they’ve been in the coun­try for some time and speak some Eng­lish and apply for per­ma­nent res­i­dency. Ulti­mately cit­i­zen­ship too could be in reach but only after a process that doesn’t nudge aside immi­grants already in line, and Rubio hasn’t pro­vided details on how long it all might take.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 26 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.