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By DAVE MONTGOMERY, Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - The Bush administration urged Congress on Tuesday to enact a three-point immigration plan that includes tougher security at the border, aggressive interior enforcement and an immigrant guest-worker program much like the controversial one the president first proposed nearly two years ago.

Under the updated program, immigrants who are living in the United States illegally would be able to step "out of the shadows" to work in the country for up to six years before being required to return to their home countries. But they would first be required to pay "substantial" fines and wouldn't be put on paths toward permanent residency or U.S. citizenship.

The proposal, outlined in broad terms Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was attacked by conservative Republicans, who denounced it as a form of "amnesty" that would reward lawbreakers.

Chertoff and Chao disputed that, describing the guest-worker program as an essential element in any attempt to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Under questioning, the homeland security chief effectively ruled out mass deportation for the nearly 11 million immigrants who live in the country illegally.

"I think it would be hugely, hugely difficult to do this," Chertoff said, predicting that such a roundup would cost "billions and billions and billions of dollars" and would be fraught with legal and logistical complications.

Congressional leaders have acknowledged that Hurricane Katrina and the debate over President Bush's Supreme Court nominees have taken over their agenda and delayed action on immigration until after January. But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Judiciary Committee chairman, said Senate leaders planned to address the issue with "very substantial urgency."

Top White House staff members have been meeting with leaders in the House and the Senate in recent weeks in an attempt to craft a compromise. The latest blueprint, however, appeared likely to draw much of the same opposition that Bush confronted when he proposed a temporary guest-worker program in January 2004.