U.S. Senate to tighten immigration law

By The Nation Newspaper

An immigration bill being written in the Senate in United States aims to wipe out nearly all illegal crossings along the southwestern border with Mexico while maintaining a 13-year timetable for existing illegal residents to win citizenship, sources said on Wednesday.

The carefully crafted language is intended to attract support from Republican in Congress for comprehensive immigration legislation this year, while accommodating Democrats’ desire to help the estimated 11 million foreigners living in the U.S. illegally.

The idea is to create tough law-and-order provisions that backers could argue would finally fix a porous U.S. border, as well as keeping foreigners who have obtained visas from overstaying them.

A bipartisan group of eight Democratic and Republican senators writing the bill is hoping to sign off on the measure in coming days.

Under the tentative deal worked out by the group, the Department of Homeland Security would be tasked with developing plans to stop nearly all illegal border crossings, two sources familiar with the plan said.

Border security would be linked to the path to citizenship and the standards would be set by Congress.

Once DES submitted the plan, the government would be allowed to start providing initial provisional legal status to the illegal immigrants who qualify, one source said.

The agency would be given three billion dollars to immediately implement the plan, according to one Senate aide familiar with the legislation.

The two sources, who asked not to be identified, said the DHS border plan would have a goal of stopping 90 per cent of illegal border crossings at “high risk’’ areas.

If the agency failed to meet the goal in any of the first five years after the immigration law was enacted, a newly created commission would come up with additional steps to stop visa overstays and illegal border crossings, the sources said.

The federal government would dedicate another two billion dollars to achieve these security steps, the Senate aide said.