Chances of Immigration Reform Slim

WASHINGTON (By Alan Elsner, Reuters) June 22, 2005- President Bush's efforts to overhaul U.S. immigration law have spawned two competing bills in the Senate but the issue is highly divisive and the chances of passing any bill in this Congress are slim.

"The battle for immigration reform is going to happen on the right," said Tamar Jacoby of the conservative Manhattan Institute. "We're at the point now when we're getting actual plans and the debate is starting in earnest."

Last month, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy put forward bipartisan legislation backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and numerous other groups that would allow some of the estimated 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the United States to gain legal work permits and eventual citizenship.

But the White House has not endorsed the bill and is instead working with Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona, who are crafting a rival bill that is tougher on border enforcement and less generous to migrants.

Cornyn and Kyl would spend billions of dollars to strengthen control of the U.S. border with Mexico. They envisage hiring 10,000 new border patrol agents and want to invest in unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras, barriers and sensors as well as adding 10,000 new jail beds to detain illegal immigrants.

Their bill will also include a guest worker program but it would require foreign workers to eventually return to their countries of origin rather than offering them an eventual path to citizenship.

"It would be a temporary worker program based on the principle of work and return rather than work and stay," Cornyn said in a telephone interview on Monday.

As far as the illegal immigrants already in the country, Cornyn said he was considering a plan that would allow them to pay a fine, serve a period of probation and satisfy English language and other civic requirements to earn legal status.

Even if one of these bills or a combination of them got through the Senate, it would still face formidable obstacles in the House of Representatives where Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo heads an anti-immigration lobby of 80 members, mostly Republicans.

POWERFUL OPPONENTS

Powerful figures like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and judiciary committee chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, though not members of Tancredo's lobby, seem unenthusiastic about immigration changes and much more concerned with strengthening border security and cracking down on illegal aliens and those who employ them.

Michele Waslin of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic group, said that Latinos, the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc and a key swing constituency, were paying close attention to the debate.

"It affects everyone. If they are not immigrants themselves, they have relatives who are," she said.

"The House continues to pass one anti-immigrant provision after another. But as tension and frustration build around the country, we finally have some serious attempts at immigration reform in the Senate," Waslin said.

Some analysts believe this year's efforts will be little more than a first skirmish in a long-term struggle that could last for years.

"It often takes a couple of Congresses to get anything of this magnitude done and it's certainly up in the air as to whether the current Congress can make any progress," said James Gimpel, a political scientist at the University of Maryland.

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants continue streaming into the United States, mostly across the Mexican border, at an estimated rate of 400,000 a year. Polls indicate that Americans are increasingly angry about this.

In a Zogby poll last month, 76 percent of respondents said the government was not doing enough to control the border and 53 percent said it should send troops to stop illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico.

"Americans have a real problem with illegal immigration, although a majority still values the American tradition of welcoming immigrants to our shores," said pollster John Zogby.