New York Times
By Ashley Parker and Julia Preston
May 22, 2013
After its solid bipartisan approval in committee, broad legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws was headed Wednesday to the Senate floor, where supporters of the plan were already mobilizing to bring more Republicans on board by focusing on strengthening border security provisions in the bill.
The push to expand Republican support poses new challenges for the bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the original bill, as it puts pressure on Latino and other major immigration advocacy groups to make concessions on border security. Democrats and pro-immigration organizations fear that further changing the delicate border compromise could indefinitely delay legal status for 11 million immigrants already in the country — one of the key components of the bill.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a co-author of the bill who took the lead in selling it to fellow Republicans and conservative activists, is likely to become an even more visible figure, crucial to marshaling conservative support behind the immigration changes. Mr. Rubio was mainly on the sidelines during the Judiciary Committee debate because he is not a member of that panel.
Mr. Rubio has said he hopes to further strengthen border security “triggers” during the Senate floor debate in June. The current bill sets up a sequence of new border measures that must be in place before illegal immigrants can gain legal status and eventually citizenship. Under the current bill, the Department of Homeland Security is directed to produce and carry out the border security plan, with as much as $6.5 billion for technology, fencing and border agents.
An aide to Mr. Rubio said he was working to offer an amendment — either on his own, or with a fellow Republican — that would take the authority away from the department and move the responsibility to Congress.
This week, Mr. Rubio met with border security and law enforcement officials to get their views on strengthening border provisions, and a Fox News immigration town-hall-style meeting he taped with Sean Hannity is expected to be broadcast on Friday.
After more than 300 amendments were weighed, the bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee with the central provisions largely intact for a 13-year path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, only recently viewed as the most vulnerable piece of the bill. The committee on Tuesday easily defeated an amendment by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, to eliminate the chance for citizenship.
Democrats in the bipartisan group made it clear they would fight to defend that pathway, a central piece in the complex equation of the bill.
“If we don’t have a path to citizenship, there is no reform,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat and an author of the bill, told Mr. Cruz during the debate. After the vote, Mr. Schumer, foreseeing the debate to come, said, “The only bottom line I’ve always had, and I think the Democrats have had, is we have to make sure the trigger is achievable and concrete.”
Mr. Schumer said after the committee vote that he hoped to be “lucky enough” to get 70 votes in the Senate. Lawmakers predicted the vote would come in late June.
Democrats will also have to work to assuage an influential group of allies: gay advocates, who were furious when a provision they supported was left out of the legislation. After a deliberation he described as agonizing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, withheld his amendment that would have allowed American citizens to apply for permanent resident status — a document known as a green card — for their same-sex partners.
Gay rights advocates focused their ire on Wednesday on several Democrats on the committee who had urged Mr. Leahy not to go forward with his amendment — particularly Mr. Schumer, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California — after the bill’s Republican sponsors had said the measure would cause them to bolt.
“It is going to be rough going on the Senate floor, and when the Democrats did not speak up for gays, they made it clear they will fold under pressure,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality. She said gay activists would press for an amendment to be added during debate on the Senate floor.
The Democratic lawmakers said they hoped some pressure would be lifted when the Supreme Court issues its ruling, expected in late June, on a federal law that describes marriage as between a man and a woman.
In the Democrat-controlled committee, conservative opponents made little headway on altering the bill.
Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, tenaciously assailed the measure, offering 15 amendments, to cut back drastically the number of immigrants over all who could come to the country and to expand the role of local police enforcement. Only two of Mr. Sessions’s amendments passed, and at times he appeared isolated even among the other conservatives on the committee.
Conservatives had announced a national day of action on Wednesday, and many dozens of conservative leaders signed a letter denouncing the bill as a costly bureaucratic juggernaut, comparing it to President Obama’s health care overhaul. But so far conservatives have not been able to generate the level of public outcry against the immigration overhaul they achieved in 2007.
In the Republican-controlled House, Republican leaders were leaving several options open. A bipartisan group is also working in the House and has said it will introduce a bill by early June. But on Wednesday Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, held a hearing to examine the Senate bill, which he opened with a blunt rejection of its security provisions. Mr. Goodlatte echoed the call from Mr. Rubio for big changes in the border plans.
“Whether or not it contains triggers, the Senate bill is unlikely to secure the border,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “It requires D.H.S. to simply submit a border security plan to initiate the legalization of 11 million unlawful immigrants.”
Even opponents of the bipartisan bill are part of a consensus among many members of Congress that the nation’s immigration laws do need to be revamped. Before the vote in committee Tuesday night, both Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, acknowledged as much, saying that while they could not yet support the bill, they believed it deserved a full debate on the floor.
“I believe it’s important to get the bill on the floor, and we can work together to try and improve it and make it as good as it can possibly be,” Mr. Cornyn said.
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