Key US senator sees deal this week on immigration
9 April 2013 6:51 AM IST
A noisy debate over the flawed US immigration system begins in earnest this week as senators finalise a bipartisan bill to secure the border, allow tens of thousands of foreign workers into the country and grant eventual citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living illegally.
Negotiators warned of struggles ahead, but all involved are optimistic that it’s time to make the biggest changes to the nation’s immigration laws in more than a quarter-century. ‘There will be a great deal of unhappiness about this proposal because everybody didn’t get what they wanted,’ Republican Senator John McCain, a leader of the eight senators negotiating the legislation, said yesterday on CBS.
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, another of the eight senators involved, told CBS he’s hoping for a bipartisan deal by the end of this week.
In a bitterly divided Congress, the immigration bill appears to be one of the few major pieces of legislation that is likely to receive bipartisan support and become law. For many opposition Republicans, their loss in last year’s presidential election, when Latino and Asians voters backed President Barack Obama in big numbers, resonates as evidence that they must confront the immigration issue.
Negotiators warned of struggles ahead, but all involved are optimistic that it’s time to make the biggest changes to the nation’s immigration laws in more than a quarter-century. ‘There will be a great deal of unhappiness about this proposal because everybody didn’t get what they wanted,’ Republican Senator John McCain, a leader of the eight senators negotiating the legislation, said yesterday on CBS.
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, another of the eight senators involved, told CBS he’s hoping for a bipartisan deal by the end of this week.
In a bitterly divided Congress, the immigration bill appears to be one of the few major pieces of legislation that is likely to receive bipartisan support and become law. For many opposition Republicans, their loss in last year’s presidential election, when Latino and Asians voters backed President Barack Obama in big numbers, resonates as evidence that they must confront the immigration issue.
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