Senator Kennedy Will Reintroduce Immigration Bill

WASHINGTON— Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts said yesterday that he expects to reintroduce comprehensive immigration legislation in the next week and hopes the Senate will debate it by early spring.

Mr. Kennedy, a Democrat, is working with Senator McCain of Arizona, a Republican presidential candidate, to tweak a bill they sponsored in the last Congress that passed the Senate but could not be reconciled with a House bill that called for tougher measures to combat illegal immigration. The McCain-Kennedy bill, which had the support of President Bush, would combine a guest-worker program with increased border security and penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"We have worked with Senator McCain, and we've made real progress," Mr. Kennedy told reporters in a briefing yesterday after meeting at the Capitol with the archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Cardinal Mahony.

An immigration overhaul is expected to have a greater chance for success with a Democratic Congress, and the president made it a priority in his State of the Union address. Cardinal Mahony stepped up pressure for "reform," saying a comprehensive approach was the only way to address immigration responsibly. "This year, 2007. This is the year," he told reporters in Spanish.