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Immigrant dilemma divides senators
Judiciary panel begins tough debate on future of border
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, March 3, 2006


Pressure from all sides to do something -- the question being what -- to fix the nation's immigration system pushed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday to open a laborious, monthlong effort to come up with some remedy for the tide of illegal migrants.

The fracture in the Republican Party over immigration immediately became apparent in a three-way division among party members on the committee. Hardliners urged a crackdown on employers and the border. Others pushed a guest worker program that would require an exodus of all 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. And still others called for a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants now here to apply for permanent residence and citizenship while enforcement was beefed up.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, acknowledged he has found no takers for his big compromise bill that attempts to thread the needle between President Bush's insistence on a guest worker program and a backlash against illegal immigration as a tight congressional midterm election approaches.

"I have seen virtually no agreement on anything," Specter said. "Emotions are at an all-time high."

All sides agree on tougher border and interior enforcement. But Specter made clear that he wanted to find some way to draw "out of the shadows" the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country. That would almost by definition require some sort of offer of legal status, and thinking has coalesced around a guest worker plan, which would provide temporary visas for those with jobs. But other than the 1950s-era Bracero program for farmworkers, nothing of the magnitude of what is now under discussion has been attempted before.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., splitting with fellow Democrats, again voiced strong opposition to a guest worker plan.

Warning that emotions on immigration "run subliminally, and they run deep," she pointed to Proposition 187 -- which passed with the approval of nearly 60 percent of California voters in 1994 -- to bar undocumented immigrants from all state benefits, including public education. Feinstein said she opposed that measure, later struck down by the courts, and "almost lost my election over it."

She said a guest worker program that would "legalize 11 million in one fell swoop" goes too far. She noted that House leaders have warned that they will not accept a guest worker plan. The House has passed a bill that calls for a crackdown on employers and a big increase in border enforcement, including a 700-mile fence. Although that bill is unlikely ever to pass the Senate, Feinstein noted that the Senate also must get the House to agree with what it does or else the whole effort is "a useless action."

Feinstein proposed limiting a legalization program to existing farmworkers, even though last year she helped scuttle a similar bipartisan bill called AgJobs. Under her plan, 300,000 illegal immigrants would be recognized each year, but other industries such as hotels and nursing homes whose businesses are clamoring for labor would be left out.

But other border-state senators, including Republicans Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, insisted that the status quo -- with escalating violence on the Southwest border by increasingly sophisticated and organized smuggling gangs -- is untenable. They accused opponents of guest worker plans of election-year demagoguery, saying it's irresponsible to ignore the 11 million people in the country illegally.

"It will not work to ignore them in the hope that the problem goes away on its own," Cornyn said.

But their remedy -- a program that would require people to go home first for a five-year period to apply for legal re-entry, then go home again after six years working in the United States -- is opposed by most Democrats as costly and unworkable.

Border-state worries are clearly bipartisan. Last summer, two Democratic governors, New Mexico's Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano of Arizona, declared "border emergencies" in their states.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., indicated she remains opposed to Bush's guest worker plan because it might attract more illegal migrants.

The Western Governors' Association unanimously adopted a resolution this week urging a guest worker program, and governors met with Bush privately to press their concerns.

But Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said politicians were forgetting the results of a 1986 amnesty, passed as part of the last major overhaul of U.S. immigration law, aimed at fixing the problem at the time of 3 million illegal immigrants.

At his Iowa town meetings, Grassley said there is widespread sentiment for sending all 11 million illegal immigrants home.

"We need border and interior enforcement first and foremost," Grassley said, deriding guest worker plans as disguised amnesty for lawbreakers and ridiculing the idea that the problem-plagued immigration agency could handle such a vast program.

"You see them on the corners of this town, and nobody pays any attention," Grassley said.

But others said a crackdown was tried 10 years ago with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., noted that former President Ronald Reagan supported the 1986 amnesty to deal with the 3 million undocumented in the country at that time. The numbers had grown to 7 million when former President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 border crackdown approach. Now the estimate has reached 11 million.

"Amnesty doesn't quite work," Brownback said. "You do an enforcement-only bill and that doesn't quite work. Each time the numbers build. The lesson out of this is we need to do both."

Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony called on all 288 parishes in the Los Angeles Archdiocese this week to fast and pray during Lent for humane immigration reform, including a guest worker program. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has joined the Service Employees International Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an unusual and powerful coalition behind a guest worker plan.

Mahony was reacting in part to the House-passed bill, which would make illegal presence in the country a felony and criminalize any assistance given to illegal immigrants.

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.