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Immigration Plan Will Be Ready This Week, Sen. Chuck Schumer Says

<div id="mediaarticlebody">WASHINGTON - As the Senate returns from recess this week, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he thinks the bi-partisan Gang of Eight will have its immigration plan completed by the end of the week."We hope that we can have a bipartisan agreement among the eight of us on comprehensive immigration reform by the end of the week," Schumer said today on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Over the last two weeks, we've made great progress. There have been kerfuffles along the way, but each one of those, thus far, has been settled."Schumer said that the staffs of each Gang of Eight member has worked 12 hours a day to fine-tune the details of their immigration plan and reach an agreement on every issue.In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also a member of the Gang of Eight, set a longer time frame of a "couple of weeks" before the plan is completed.But one Republican member of the bi-partisan group has expressed concern that the deal on immigration reform is being reached in haste.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has called for more hearings and time to review the plan in order to encourage "healthy public debate.""Arriving at a final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people's consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren't part of this initial drafting process," Rubio said in a statement last week. "In order to succeed, this process cannot be rushed or done in secret."Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., disputed the idea that the plan is being rushed, saying on CBS' "Face the Nation," "I reject this notion that something is being railroaded through. This is the beginning of the process, not the end of it."Graham defended Rubio, even though questions have been raised about whether he will ultimately agree to a bi-partisan plan."Marco Rubio has been a game changer in my party," Graham said. "He will be there only if the Democrats will embrace a guest worker program and a merit-based immigration system to replace the broken one and we'll regain our sovereignty by securing our borders and having control of jobs through E-Verify. Marco will be there."<a class="read-more" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2Fblogs%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2F04%2Fimmigration-plan-will-be-ready-this-week-sen-chuck-schumer-says%2F" rel="nofollow" title="">Also Read</a></div><img border="0" height="1" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif" width="1" /> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-plan-ready-week-sen-chuck-schumer-says-210019506--abc-news-politics.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a>

Immigration Plan Will Be Ready This Week, Sen. Chuck Schumer Says

WASHINGTON - As the Senate returns from recess this week, Sen. Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y., said he thinks the bi-partisan Gang of Eight will ha...

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19:57

Schumer sees deal this week on immigration

<div id="mediaarticlebody">WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday he's hoping for a bipartisan deal by the end of this week on a sweeping immigration bill to secure the border and allow eventual citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living here illegally."All of us have said that there will be no agreement until the eight of us agree to a big, specific bill, but hopefully we can get that done by the end of the week," said Schumer, D-N.Y., who's leading efforts by eight senators to craft the legislation. "That's what we're on track to do."Schumer spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation" alongside Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., another leader of the immigration talks, who suggested there could be a tough road ahead for the contentious legislation."There will be a great deal of unhappiness about this proposal because everybody didn't get what they wanted," McCain said. "There are entrenched positions on both sides of this issue as far as business and labor."A deal on immigration is a top second-term priority for President Barack Obama, and his senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday that the bill being developed in the Senate is completely consistent Obama's approach — even though the Senate plan would tie border security to a path to citizenship in a manner Obama administration officials have criticized.Pfeiffer didn't answer directly when asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether Obama would sign legislation making a path to citizenship contingent on first securing the border, as negotiators in the Senate are doing. But he suggested Obama was supportive of the Senate plan."What they are looking at and what has been talked about in the Gang of Eight proposal is 100 percent consistent with what the president is doing so we feel very good about it," Pfeiffer said. "And they are looking at it in the right way."Obama has stressed that a path to citizenship should not have major hurdles in front of it, and some immigration advocates believe that's what a requirement for a secure border would amount to. Obama's Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has rejected the argument that border security must be achieved before a comprehensive immigration package or any pathway to legalized status can be done.But Republicans involved in the Senate negotiations have made clear that border security is a must for them before those living here illegally can be allowed to move toward citizenship."We are going to secure that border and it will be tied to a pathway to citizenship or there will be no deal," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another negotiator on the bill, said Sunday.Graham also suggested that disagreement over a new low-skilled worker program could still be hanging up an overall immigration deal — even after an agreement a week ago between the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.The hard-won deal between labor and business would ultimately allow up to 200,000 workers a year into the U.S. to fill jobs in construction, hospitality, nursing homes and other areas where employers now say they have a difficult time hiring Americans or legally bringing in foreign workers. Even after the deal was struck, some industries, such as construction, continued to voice complaints about the terms.Without offering details, Graham said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that negotiators were revisiting the low-skilled worker deal. But he issued a statement a short time later saying he was confident the agreement would hold.Graham sounded optimistic overall, predicting the bill would pass the 100-member Senate with 70 votes in favor. Senators believe an overwhelming bipartisan vote is needed in the Democratic-led Senate to ensure a chance of success in the Republican-controlled House. Floor action could start in the Senate in May, Schumer said.Meanwhile two lawmakers involved in writing a bipartisan immigration bill in the House, Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., sounded optimistic that they, too, would have a deal soon that could be reconciled with the Senate agreement."I am very, very optimistic that the House of Representatives is going to have a plan that is going to be able to go to a conference with the Senate in which we're going to be able to resolve this," Gutierrez said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union".</div><img border="0" height="1" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif" width="1" /> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/schumer-sees-deal-week-immigration-152142201--finance.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a>

Schumer sees deal this week on immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday he's hoping for a bipartisan deal by the end of this week on a sweeping immigration ...

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18:57

Business, labor close on deal for immigration bill

<div id="mediaarticlebody">WASHINGTON (AP) — Big business and major labor unions appeared ready Friday to end a fight over a new low-skilled worker program that had threatened to upend negotiations on a sweeping immigration bill in the Senate providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants already in the U.S.Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who's been brokering talks between the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement that negotiators are "very close, closer than we have ever been, and we are very optimistic." He said there were still a few issues remaining.The talks stalled late last week amid a dispute over wages for workers in the new program, and senators left town for a two-week recess with the issue in limbo. Finger-pointing erupted between the AFL-CIO and the chamber, with each side accusing the other of trying to sink immigration reform, leaving prospects for a resolution unclear.But talks resumed this week, and now officials from both sides indicate the wage issue has been largely resolved. An agreement would likely clear the way for a bipartisan group of senators to unveil legislation the week of April 8 to dramatically overhaul the U.S. immigration system, strengthening the border and cracking down on employers as well as remaking the legal immigration system while providing a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S."We're feeling very optimistic on immigration: Aspiring Americans will receive the road map to citizenship they deserve and we can modernize 'future flow' without reducing wages for any local workers, regardless of what papers they carry," AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Hauser said in a statement. "Future flow" refers to future arrivals of legal immigrants.Under the emerging agreement, a new "W'' visa program would bring tens of thousands lower-skilled workers a year to the country. The program would be capped at 200,000 a year, but the number of visas would fluctuate, depending on unemployment rates, job openings, employer demand and data collected by a new federal bureau pushed by the labor movement as an objective monitor of the market.The workers would be able to change jobs and could seek permanent residency. Under current temporary worker programs, workers can't move from employer to employer and have no path to permanent U.S. residence and citizenship.The new visas would cover dozens of professions such as long-term care workers and hotel and hospitality employees. Currently there's no good way for employers to bring many such workers to the U.S.; an existing visa program for low-wage nonagricultural workers is capped at 66,000 per year and is supposed to apply only to seasonal or temporary jobs.The Chamber of Commerce said workers would get paid actual wages paid to American workers or the prevailing wages for the industry they're working in, whichever is higher. The Labor Department determines prevailing wage based on rates prevailing in specific localities, so that it would vary from city to city.The labor organization had accused the chamber of trying to pay workers in the new program poverty-level wages, something the chamber disputed.There was also disagreement about how to deal with certain higher-skilled construction jobs, such as electricians and welders, and it appears those will be excluded from the deal, said Geoff Burr, vice president of federal affairs at Associated Builders and Contractors. Burr said his group opposes such an exclusion because, even though unemployment in the construction industry is high right now, at times when it is low there can be labor shortages in high-skilled trades and contractors want to be able to bring in foreign workers. But unions pressed for the exclusion, Burr said.The low-skilled worker issue had loomed for weeks as perhaps the toughest matter to settle in monthslong closed-door talks on immigration among Schumer and seven other senators, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida. The issue helped sink the last major attempt at immigration reform in 2007, when the legislation foundered on the Senate floor after an amendment was added to end a temporary worker program after five years, threatening a key priority of the business community.The amendment passed by just one vote, 49-48. President Barack Obama, a senator at the time, joined in the narrow majority voting to end the program after five years.___Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericawerner</div><img border="0" height="1" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif" width="1" /> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/business-labor-close-deal-immigration-bill-185315130.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a>

Business, labor close on deal for immigration bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Big business and major labor unions appeared ready Friday to end a fight over a new low-skilled worker program that had ...

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19:57

Immigration Plan Will Be Ready This Week, Sen. Chuck Schumer Says

Schumer sees deal this week on immigration

Business, labor close on deal for immigration bill

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