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July 23, 2006
Republican Dispute on Immigration Bill Encompasses Even Its Name
By JULIA PRESTON
After more than two weeks of Congressional hearings over immigration reform, there is no sign of compromise between the House Republican majority and the Senate on the issue, which has bitterly divided Republicans. The lawmakers are even arguing over names.

At hearings last week in Washington, House Republicans routinely referred to an immigration bill the Senate passed in May as the “Reid-Kennedy bill,” associating it with two Democrats, Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the liberal lawmaker who was one of its authors.

Democrats pointed out that the name omitted at least one prominent Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who wrote the bill with Mr. Kennedy. In the Senate, the measure is known as the McCain-Kennedy bill. Another Republican, President Bush, also supports it.

At a House education committee hearing on Wednesday, Representative Robert E. Andrews, Democrat of New Jersey, thanked the Republicans “for declaring Democratic victory in the effort to take over the Senate” by recognizing the roles of Mr. Reid and Mr. Kennedy. But Mr. Andrews said it would be more accurate to call the measure “the Bush-McCain-Reid-Kennedy bill.”

“Only 23 Republicans voted for it,” retorted Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the Republican chairman of the committee. The Senate bill passed with 62 votes after a late compromise forged by yet more Republicans, Senators Mel Martinez of Florida and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

The re-baptism reflects the intensity of the House Republicans’ rift with their Senate colleagues over the bill, which creates a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants. The new name was part of a strategy that House Republican leaders devised last month when they decided to hold hearings through the summer to build support for their position, postponing negotiations with the Senate.

“We thought we ought to explain it for what it is, a bill that relied heavily on Democrats,” said Kevin Madden, the spokesman for the House majority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio. A bill passed by the House in December focuses on border security and makes it a crime to be in the United States illegally.

Asked at a recent news conference how he felt about the bill’s name and being purged from it, Mr. McCain said, “You can call it a banana if you want to,” as long as it eventually becomes law.

In another semantic dispute, arguments raged in the hearings over the word amnesty, which House Republicans say is what the Senate bill amounts to.

“It meets the minimal, if not the over-the-top, standards” for amnesty, said James R. Edwards Jr., an immigration expert at the conservative Hudson Institute. He said the legalization provisions in the bill would reward lawbreakers and encourage others to enter the country illegally.

Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, responded by citing the American Heritage Dictionary, noting that amnesty is based on the Latin word for amnesia. “We have no amnesia in the Senate bill,” Ms. Jackson-Lee said. The Senate measure includes tough hurdles that illegal immigrants must clear before they can become legal, she argued.

The two sides cannot even agree on whom the debate is about. House Republicans refer to “illegal aliens,” while supporters of the Senate bill prefer the more anodyne but vague “undocumented immigrants.”