Church of the Incarnation

Immigration reform dead; GOP eyes tokens

Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Sept. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Sweeping immigration reform won't pass Congress before November's elections, but Republicans said Thursday they still hope to push billions of dollars in new border security measures into law before members leave town to campaign.

Doing that would give the GOP-controlled Congress something to tout to voters who want the federal government to stop illegal immigration. But lawmakers this week essentially ruled out resolving the vast differences between reform bills passed by the House and Senate.

That leaves the future uncertain for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country and sets the stage for the debate over how to fix a broken immigration system to start again next year.

And it means there will be no victory for supporters of broad reforms that would let undocumented immigrants get legal status, as the bill the Senate approved in May would do. Yet, GOP leaders also conceded that whatever they do pass will fall short of the tough border security bill the House approved in December.

"It won't be the whole 95 tons of what we've tried to work out between the Senate and the House," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

The GOP is split between supporters of broad reforms and supporters of more enforcement. President Bush has pushed for the Senate bill, but many conservative House members and voters say it's tantamount to giving amnesty to lawbreakers.

So Republicans plan to introduce a set of border security proposals next week, which could include money for new infrastructure and Border Patrol agents as well as some proposals to make Social Security cards harder to counterfeit.

Before unveiling their proposals, House GOP officials will hold an event where the chairmen of committees that conducted hearings on immigration around the country this summer will discuss what they learned.

Authors of the Senate bill said they wouldn't block border security measures that don't change the basic nature of the immigration system.

"Just because I can't get what I want... that doesn't mean I'd try to kill it," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a co-sponsor with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., of the legislation upon which the Senate bill is based.

Advocates for immigrants rights, who mocked the hearings the House held all summer as an attempt to kill reform by slowing down the legislative process, said they were disappointed but not surprised.