Story Highlights• GOP senator calls agreement reached between parties a "grand bargain"
• Border security, citizenship, guest workers will be crux of next week's debate
• Bipartisan group working to hammer out differences in last year's failed legislation
• House speaker says she wants strong GOP support guaranteed before any vote
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senators may have mended fences on contentious immigration legislation that sputtered in Congress last year, and they will head into next week's debate with what one GOP senator called a "grand bargain."

However, it's unclear if lawmakers will pick up where they left off, or if they plan to start anew.

Senators from both parties have hammered out an outline for a bill and "have come to an agreement on what we have called a, quote, 'grand bargain,' " Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said from the Senate floor Tuesday.

Speaking at a Wednesday news conference, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, urged President Bush to join the bipartisan group of senators in ushering a bill through the legislative process.

"The president has got to be personally involved," Leahy said. "You cannot just send up Cabinet members and ask them to speak with a few members of the president's party and think that's going to get you through. You cannot issue great-sounding press releases on a take-it-or-leave-it basis."

Leahy said he believes the president is committed to solving the nation's immigration woes, "but this won't work unless he comes in and talks to both Republicans and Democrats and makes it very clear that he is behind our efforts."

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has set a Monday deadline for beginning debate on the issue, but he has not indicated whether senators would discuss the old bill or a new one.

"One of those two things I will bring to the Senate floor, and that will be the working document that we will work from," Reid said Tuesday.

Bush and Democratic leaders have generally concurred on immigration, much to the chagrin of Bush's conservative base, which helped shoot down last year's legislation in the GOP-controlled Congress.

Last year's bill stalled because of its reliance on Bush's proposed temporary guest-worker program and a clause paving a road to citizenship for the millions of immigrants already in the United States illegally.

GOP critics in the House of Representatives fiercely opposed the proposals, saying they amounted to "amnesty." The Senate bill never meshed with a GOP-skippered House proposal that focused primarily on border enforcement, and the prospect of an immigration overhaul ultimately died.

Congressional sources said earlier this month that a bipartisan group of legislators was working to reconcile the proposals, and it hasn't come easy. (Full story)

Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who co-authored the plan that stalled last year, said as much this month. Added GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia: "All of the meetings I've been in are very intense because this is the No. 1 domestic issue in the country and passions run deeply on all sides."

Weeks of negotiations have focused on a compromise that would OK citizenship and a guest-worker program only after the White House showed progress in securing the nation's borders and enforcing already-existing immigration laws, sources said.

"We are talking about triggers," Specter said, "so that we don't move ahead to dealing with the 11 million undocumented immigrants or dealing with a temporary-worker program until we have solved the problem of securing the border and providing for identification so that there is a basis for using tough sanctions on the employers."

To enforce such sanctions, Specter said, you have to give employers "a fair opportunity to know who is legal and who is illegal."

The measure under consideration would double the number of Border Patrol agents to 12,000 and would include "very strong employer sanctions," Specter said.

While Democrats and Republicans seem to be reaching an agreement in the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said she wants to see strong GOP support for an immigration bill before it hits the House hopper.

She reportedly has told the White House that no immigration bill will make it to the House floor unless Bush can guarantee at least 70 Republican ayes.

The ultimatum is aimed at ensuring the bill is labeled bipartisan, thereby making it difficult for Republicans to use the legislation against Democrats in the 2008 elections, a Democratic source said.

CNN's Dana Bash contributed to this report.
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