Immigration deal is close, but first committee votes still weeks away
WASHINGTON A bipartisan group of senators could unveil a sweeping immigration bill that would give legal status to the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants by early next week, but it could be another month before their colleagues in the Senate can start voting on it.
The group of senators known as the Gang of Eight has missed several self-imposed deadlines to file its bill and is now trying to finish it by late this week or early next week. Three Senate aides involved in the negotiations confirmed a Politico report Tuesday that it would not be ready for a committee vote until the week of May 6. The aides asked that their names not be used because they were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing negotiations.
Some Republican senators, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have called for a slow legislative process so that members of the Senate can have ample time to weigh the multiple, complicated components of the bill. Aside from creating a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, it would tighten border security, require U.S. business owners to check the immigration status of new employees and significantly alter the way the U.S. grants visas in the future.
“Sen. Rubio has said from the outset that we will not rush this process, and that begins at the committee level,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said Tuesday. “The Judiciary Committee must have plenty of time to debate and improve the bipartisan group’s proposal, so it’s good that senators and the public will have weeks to study this proposal before the Judiciary Committee will mark it up.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been trying to speed up the process. During an interview Tuesday with Telemundo, Leahy announced that he would hold an immigration hearing April 17 and that he hoped there would be a bill by that time.
In a letter to Rubio last week, Leahy said he understood that some senators wanted to “slow the process” but that he intended to move more quickly.
“While you have conducted the process of the ‘gang of eight’ behind closed doors, I can assure you that it has always been my position ... that the work of the committee should be open to the public,” Leahy said.
The latest delay was frustrating for labor officials who are organizing a rally outside the Capitol on Wednesday calling for the immigration bill to move forward. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said she has been pushing for the Senate to file the bill and hoped that today’s rally would help speed things up.
“We first heard (they would introduce the bill) the first week of March. Then we heard the third week of April. Now?” she said. “The momentum is with us. They’ve been stewing, working, working. Now we need them to act.”