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Bipartisan Movement on Immigration Reform Prompts National, State and Houston Reaction

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VIDEO LINK: Immigration Reform Could Mean Billions in Revenue for Texas, Labor Groups Say
(KTRK 13 News)

Rosalind S. Helderman & William Branigin Washington Post
A bipartisan group of senators outlined a far-reaching proposal Monday to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, saying that the time has come to fix “our broken immigration system.”

At a joint news conference, five of the eight senators who signed on to a detailed statement of principles to guide the effort portrayed it as a way to resolve the plight of millions of undocumented immigrants living illegally in society’s shadows and to modernize and streamline the legal immigration system.

[…] The White House embraced the immigration proposal Monday but stopped short of pledging President Obama’s signature, noting that legislation on the issue has yet to be drafted.

“It’s a set of principles that mirror the president’s principles,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at Monday’s briefing. The president is expected to present his own proposal at an event in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

The senators’ announcement comes as a bipartisan group of House members is also working on an immigration proposal. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week that they “basically have an agreement.”

[…] The [Senate] group outlined the key balance in its proposed framework: Legalization would be afforded almost immediately to the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, provided they pay back taxes and a fine. But the opportunity to pursue full citizenship would not become available until the border was secured and new systems were in place for employers to verify workers’ immigration status and for the government to ensure that legal immigrants cannot overstay their visas.

The document also calls for tying flows of legal immigration to the nation’s unemployment rate but generally expanding visa programs to discourage people from crossing the border without permission.

“It’s a pretty straightforward principle,” said Rubio, who switched between English and Spanish during the lengthy rollout. “It’s a principle that says we have to modernize our legal immigration system, we have to have a real enforcement mechanism to ensure we’re never here again in the future, and we have to deal with the people that are here now in a way that’s responsible but humane.”
(Read the full story at the Washington Post)

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