Leading Democratic and Republican senators pledged bi-partisan support to help ignite far-reaching legislation through the Senate by the summer, a promising development for advocates of immigration reform. Their involvement may provide a more seamless path to citizenship for approximately 11 million undocumented workers. Yesterday's compromise hope to pass by late spring or early summer. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, President Obama will head to Las Vegas on Tuesday to make his pitch for immigration overhaul of the immigration. Guided by strong support from Latino voters in the last presidential election, he has made an immigration bill as a stop legislative priority for his second term.
Some of the principles to the proposal included increased border security and enforcement preceding reform. They were agreed upon by eight Republican and Democratic senators, led by New York Democrat Charles Schumer, and Arizona Senator John McCain.
McCain said Monday that more Republicans ought to come on board immigration reform because "the Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens, and we realize ... this is a pre-eminent issue for those citizens."
Millions of undocumented immigrants would get immediate but provisional status to live and work in the United States
Exit polls in the November 2012 election showed Obama got 71 percent of the Latino vote compared to 27 percent for Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Only after those steps occurred could the undocumented immigrants already in the country begin the process of getting permanent residence -- green cards -- as a step toward citizenship.
Advocacy groups for immigration reform praised the bi-partisan compromise as a good first step: "The people of this country are ready for us to be one country again without second-class people being mistreated simply because they lack paper, even though they are already contributing to our economy and our tax system," NAACP President Ben Jealous said.
Democratic senators backing the plan included Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado. Republicans included Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Senator McCain, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
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