US Senate Democratic leaders unveiled on Thursday a “framework” for overhauling the country’s “broken” immigration system as protests mounted against Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
With an estimated 10.8 million people in the US illegally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats said the first step toward reform must be bolstered US border security.
They also called for creation of a high-tech identification card for immigrant workers, a process to admit temporary workers, “tough sanctions” against US employers who hire illegal immigrants and, eventually, a path toward US citizenship for people in the country unlawfully.
The Democratic proposal would also “require those here illegally to register with the government, pay taxes, learn English, pass criminal background checks and go to the back of the line to earn legal status,” Reid said.
Critics and backers of Arizona’s controversial immigration law attribute the state’s action to Washington’s failure to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to the US.
The state’s measure, signed into law last Friday, makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally. It requires state and local police to determine a person’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” they are in the US illegally.
Republican backers say the law is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is home to some 460,000 illegal immigrants and a major corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.
Critics say the law opens the door to racial profiling. Although polls show broad support for Arizona’s law both in the state and nationally, it has sparked an outcry among Latinos, civil rights activists and organized labor before planned May Day rallies this weekend.
US President Barack Obama Obama welcomed the Senate Democratic plan and said, “What has become increasingly clear is that we can no longer wait to fix our broken immigration system.”
The president said he would work with both Democrats and Republicans on a plan for reform.
The action at the US Capitol came as the first legal and political challenges to the new Arizona law were filed in the state and a small group of activists turned out to protest the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team at a game in Chicago.
Obama’s administration said it was considering a court challenge, and Obama has called the law “misguided.”
However, Obama said on Wednesday that Congress, having dealt with a crush of volatile issues this year, may not have “the appetite now” to tackle immigration reform.
Reid and fellow members of the Senate Democratic leadership made it clear they were ready to try.
Reid acknowledged he would need at least some Republican support to clear any Senate procedural roadblocks.
“Democrats and Republicans can all agree that our immigration system is broken,” Reid said, adding bipartisan cooperation was needed to fix it.
Immigration reform, one of the most incendiary issues in US politics, is seen as unlikely to pass the Congress this election year.
Republicans have accused Reid, who faces an uphill battle for re-election in November, of calling for reform merely in a bid to rally the support of Hispanic voters in his home state of Nevada.
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