Please keep calling GOP Senators:
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Obama Links Immigration Overhaul in 2010 to G.O.P. Backing


Hundreds of young people rallied Wednesday in downtown Chicago for immigration overhaul, and a handful of them publicly declared their illegal status.

The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: March 11, 2010

President Obama said Thursday that he would proceed with an overhaul of the immigration system this year if he could attract substantial Republican support. But a leading Republican who supports an overhaul said an immigration bill could not go forward if the president used a legislative shortcut sidestepping Republicans to pass his health care bill.

Mr. Obama spent most of the afternoon in meetings on immigration, including one with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who have been holding closed-door sessions over the last six months to draw up a bill to revamp the immigration system.

The White House called the meetings to show its continued interest in an immigration overhaul, an issue that has languished since last year, in advance of a rally that immigrant groups have called for March 21 in Washington. The groups, who want to see immigration legislation passed this year, have pitched the rally as a maximum show of force with a turnout, they say, of 100,000 people.

The two senators said they gave Mr. Obama a three-page outline of the huge bill they are preparing, and they asked for his help to find additional Republican sponsors in the Senate.

But Mr. Graham, in a statement, said he had told Mr. Obama “in no uncertain termsâ€