US Senate panel approves immigration bill

 

WASHINGTON: A United States Senate panel has approved an immigration bill that paves the way for a green card for millions of illegal immigrants in the country, seen as the first step towards American citizenship.
    
The vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee of bipartisan lawmakers was 12 to 6 and there was no immediate reaction from the White House that has been pushing for a guest worker programme but making the point that it is against granting any amnesty to those who entered and stayed in the country illegally.

 

The Senate panel has designed a legislation that strengthens the borders, regulating so-called guest workers and coming to terms with an estimated 12 million illegals in the country, mostly from across the border.
    
Published accounts of the Senate panel's legislation speak of doubling the border patrol and authorising a virtual wall of unmanned vehicles and other devices to monitor the borders, allowing more visas for nurses and agricultural workers and protecting organisations from prosecution if they provided non-emergency assistance to illegal residents.
    
But the biggest boon in the proposed legislation and one that is the bone of contention is to permit illegals in the United States to apply for citizenship without first having to return home in a process that has been estimated to take six years.

 

There are a number of conditions that have been attached by Senator Edward Kennedy who was behind the proposal: illegal aliens will have to pay a fine, study English and American civics, show proof of having paid taxes and take their place in the line behind other legal applicants for citizenship.
    
The Senate panel approved a five-year plan to provide visas to about 1.5 million agricultural workers -- designed for mostly if not all from across the borders -- and provide a mechanism to seek eventual legal residency.

 

Immigrant groups are celebrating after the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared the proposal on Monday.

 

A broad coalition of business and political groups had been lobbying the Senate panel for the last several weeks to come up with a measure that clears the way for a green card for illegal immigrants.

 

The high-pitched debate leading to the Senate panel vote on Monday that saw hundreds of thousands of immigrants taking to the streets from across the country over the last several days means that the legislation will now go to the full Senate where Senator Bill Frist, Republican Majority Leader -- and a Presidential prospect for 2008 -- has his own agenda and proposal that strengthens border security and hands out stiff penalty to employers who hire undocumented workers.

 

"The situation along our Southern borders now ranks as a national security challenge, second only to the war on terror. Every day thousands of people violate our frontiers," Frist remarked, adding that the full fledged debate on immigration reform will start this week in the Senate with April 7 as a possible date for passing a bill.

 

The Frist proposal goes up against another Presidential prospect for 2008 -- Senator John McCain -- who has been instrumental in shaping the Bill that came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
    
The House of Representatives has already in place a legislation of its own that has nothing on guest workers or granting what is seen by many as an amnesty to illegal immigrants in the Senate version. The bill that is to be passed in the Senate must be reconciled with the House version.

 

One thinking is that the versions are so different at this stage and with tempers running high among a section of Republican Conservatives in the House it is quite possible that the House of Representatives may not even sit down for a conference to iron out the final language.