Bush offers immigration plan
YUMA, Ariz. – President Bush unveiled the basics of his latest immigration proposal Monday, a mix of tougher border enforcement and a complicated path to legal status for illegal immigrants that the White House hopes can break the congressional deadlock over the thorny issue.
“It’s important we get a bill done,” Bush said at a border patrol station, asking Congress to send legislation to his desk this year.
He launched a similar initiative in a nationally televised speech 11 months ago, but despite support from most Democrats his bid was stymied by fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Whether he can help steer passage of a bill this year looms as a major test of his clout in Congress in the latter half of his last term.
Although the president was vague about the details of his new effort, proposals being discussed among White House officials and GOP lawmakers seem clearly designed to bring recalcitrant Republicans on board.
For instance, one plan would require illegal immigrants wishing to remain in the United State to first return to their country of origin and pay a $10,000 fine to obtain a three-year work visa. The visas would be renewable – at a cost of $3,500. Also, illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. before June 1, 2006, who pay various fees and fines and who meet other criteria, including learning English, could eventually seek to become citizens.
These conditions for visas and citizenship are more stringent than the provisions in a bill that the Senate passed last year and that Bush supported. But it remains uncertain whether tougher conditions will overcome the objections of those Republicans – as well as some conservative Democrats – who view as amnesty any path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Bush, as he has throughout the immigration debate, insisted in his Monday speech that he opposed amnesty – which he defined as “the forgiveness of an offense without penalty.”
He said he was working with the Democrats who now control Congress and Republicans “to find a practical answer that lies between granting automatic citizenship to every illegal immigrant and deporting every illegal immigrant.”
Deportation, he added, is “just an impractical position; it’s not going to work. It may sound good. It may make a nice sound bite (but) it won’t happen.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and top Senate Democrats, such as Edward Kennedy, of Massachusetts, have told the White House they will not pass a bill relying almost exclusively on Democratic votes, forcing the administration to work for Republican support.
But in another political dilemma for Bush, the more that he embraces stiff conditions for visas and citizenship, the more he risks undercutting support among Democratic liberals for an overhaul of immigration rules.
“We’re having productive conversations with members from both sides of the aisle in both houses about comprehensive reform,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said of the give-and-take on the issue. “There are a number of proposals floating around and a number of discussions going on.”
One new wrinkle under consideration by the White House would rewrite the law on legal immigration. Until now, family relations played a key role in the awarding of visas granting legal residency to immigrants. Under the proposals being discussed by Republicans in the Senate, family connections would take a back seat to business needs.