House to consider new immigration bill

The on-again, off-again drive to overhaul U.S. immigration laws is on again, with the introduction in the House Tuesday of legislation that would open a path to legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. The bill, introduced by Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Illinois), was seen as the opening volley in what Democrats and Republicans expect to be a hard-fought battle. President Obama has pledged to take up the issue early next year; efforts to overhaul the laws during George W. Bush’s presidency failed despite the backing of Bush and some Republicans.

The New York Times’s Randal Archibold writes that Gutierrez, one of Obama’s earliest Latino supporters in Congress, said in an interview that the bill reflected a growing impatience with the pace of immigration change among a coalition of Democratic lawmakers, immigrant advocates and labor and religious groups. “This says, ‘Here, this is what we want; our proposal is out of the box,” Gutierrez said. The pressing desire for “comprehensive immigration reform” — as it is known by supporters — was made clear in the acronym of Gutierrez’s bill: “C.I.R. A.S.A.P.”

Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said she was pleased that “Congress is taking steps forward on immigration reform” but withheld comment on the details of the bill.

Archibold writes that on Capitol Hill, the bill was declared dead on arrival by some Republicans — and, privately, by some Democrats — and denounced as impractical and amounting to amnesty for people who had entered the country illegally. Two previous Congressional efforts to revamp immigration laws in the Bush years failed largely because of similar objections.

Representative Brian Bilbray (R-California) who heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus, said the bill would only generate a new wave of migrants to compete with Americans for jobs at a time of 10 percent unemployment. Democrats in the Senate who would steer an immigration overhaul through that chamber generally welcomed Gutierrez’s bill, though aides said it was too liberal to win passage as written.

Still, the legislation hewed closely to some recent statements by Obama administration officials, mainly in its call for improved border security, a crackdown on employers who hire unauthorized workers and some way to open the door to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Under the bill, to gain legal status and possibly citizenship, illegal immigrants already here would have to demonstrate they had been working, pay a $500 fine, learn English, and undergo a criminal background check, among other provisions. Unlike previous proposals in Congress, they would not have to return to their homeland first, something known as “touchback.”

The measure also calls for additional training and equipment for border guards, though not the hiring of new ones, and would require DHS to improve immigration jails and eliminate a program that deputizes local and state officers as immigration agents.

Archibold notes that the bill lacks a broad program championed by many Republicans, as well as Democrats including Obama, to address future labor demands and to better control the flow of immigration. To do that, they have advocated a program under which people could work only temporarily in the United States and then return home. Instead, the bill calls for a federal commission to study the best approach for the “future flows of workers.”

“In order for immigration reform to be effective, it needs to be comprehensive,” said Representative Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) who collaborated with Gutierrez on previous immigration bills but not this one. “Any bill without a temporary worker program is simply not comprehensive.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) is working with some Republicans on a separate bill that he has said could be ready whenever Obama asked for it. Administration officials, juggling the economic crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a divisive fight over health care, have resisted promising a specific timetable.