April 25, 2006, 11:30PM

17 senators — but not Cornyn — talk reform with Bush
Texas senator said he wasn't left out because of his hard-line stance
By SAMANTHA LEVINE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Sen. John Cornyn, who positioned himself as a point man for President Bush on immigration after running for office on the president's coattails, was left in the Senate when 17 of his colleagues met Tuesday with Bush at the White House to talk about immigration reform.
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Part of Bush's strategy to move the stalled reform debate is — as he did again Tuesday — to signal his support for legislation that would allow most illegal immigrants to stay in the United States while they apply for legal residency.

Cornyn, R-Texas, now may be out of sync with the White House because he staunchly thinks illegal immigrants must return to their home countries before they can apply for legal status.

But he downplayed any policy rift between himself and the president Tuesday.

"There is less shift (away from each other) than meets the eye," he said. "The president is trying to jump-start (the process) and he wants to get a bill out of the Senate."

The two Texans still agree on several elements of immigration reform, including beefed-up border security and enforcement of laws barring employers from knowingly hiring illegal workers.

But their split about the legalization process for immigrants marks a sharp contrast with last year, when Cornyn's proposal for comprehensive reform was widely considered representative of the White House's wishes.

No problem, the Texas senator said.

"The bill will be written when the House and Senate sit down and try to compromise their different approaches," he said. "That is when the rubber will meet the road."

That will be a bumpy road, to be sure. The House bill on immigration contains no guest worker or citizenship plan.

Cornyn also said it was fine that he was not invited to the White House on Tuesday because he gets "plenty of nice opportunities to go over and visit."

Cornyn, Rove often chat
The senator often has the ear of the White House as a longtime friend of top presidential adviser and Texas political maestro Karl Rove, with whom Cornyn frequently shares meals and chats on the phone.

Cornyn, elected in 2002, also has been an ardent supporter of the president's, notably on the hard-won Supreme Court confirmations of John Roberts in September and Samuel Alito in January.

The senator is carefully avoiding a direct confrontation with Bush partly because "loyalty to the president, and to Bush in particular, is still something that Texas Republicans care about," said Gary Freeman, a public policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

On the other hand, Freeman said, Cornyn "is responding to the national debate, which has clearly moved to the right" on immigration.

Bush has consistently stopped short of issuing a detailed list of what he wants to see in immigration reform.

Senators said Bush declined to back a specific bill to avoid angering conservatives, many of whom would be involved in negotiations about the differences between House and Senate versions.

"The problem with broad templates is that other things can fit in," said Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart, referring to immigration legislation proposed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

Kennedy, McCain thanked
That bill provides the so-called path to citizenship for the approximately 10 million illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years, provided they pay fines, learn English and continue to work, among other things.

Bush specifically thanked McCain and Kennedy for their work on immigration reform in televised comments made after the Tuesday meeting. Cornyn does not support the bill.

Cornyn made his guest-worker proposal in 2003, pitching it as a centrist approach that could win White House support because it could improve national security by registering and identifying foreign workers. Bush followed in January 2004 with broad outlines for a similar plan, but dropped the idea for months after it met with criticism.

In his 2002 Texas campaign against Democrat Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor, Cornyn's first campaign commercial on TV showed him standing next to Bush. The president said Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice, was needed in the Senate to advance a conservative agenda.

samantha.levine@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3820055.html