White House urges changes to key intelligence overhaul bill

WASHINGTON – As Congress moves to finalize a sweeping intelligence overhaul bill, the White House on Tuesday urged lawmakers to drop several controversial immigration-related provisions added by House Republicans.

In a 10-page letter that straddles the fault line between competing House and Senate bills addressing the Sept. 11 commission’s recommendations, the White House endorsed some approaches and rejected others.

“There are many good provisions in both bills and the president endorses the best of each as outlined in this letter to strike a reasonable compromise that will best reorganize our intelligence capabilities and will make the country safer and stronger,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and budget director Joshua Bolten wrote congressional negotiators, who will meet today to hash out their differences.

The White House sided with the 9-11 panel on a key issue, embracing Senate language that gives a new national intelligence director budget authority over the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies. The White House endorsed the House’s desire to keep classified the intelligence budget and voiced support for House anti-terrorism measures such as increased penalties for financing or aiding terrorists.

The administration asked the negotiators to drop several provisions unpopular with immigrant advocacy groups, Democrats and others that, if included, might doom passage of any compromise bill. The White House opposes:

• As “overbroad” the part of the House bill that would expand the number of non-citizens eligible for swift deportation without a court hearing.

• The House ban on the matricula consular and other foreign ID cards used chiefly by illegal immigrants. The White House letter said the administration was “concerned” that the measure, which would permit only the use of a foreign passport or a federally approved document, was written too broadly.

• House-passed provisions that would tighten rules for asylum seekers.

While immigrant-rights groups welcomed the White House’s stance, they said the administration didn’t go as far as it could have.

“It’s somewhat of a mixed bag,” said Michele Waslin, a policy analyst with the National Council of La Raza. “We’re happy that they seem to be opposed to the expedited removal and they seem to be opposed to the prohibition on the use of foreign identity documents. … However, they are still very supportive of a couple of measures that we think are very damaging.”

Among them, Waslin said, are House-passed measures that her organization and others insist would limit the due process rights of immigrants and asylum seekers, reduce courts’ oversight of decisions made by immigration officers and impose federal standards for driver’s licenses.