Senator Kennedy Will Reintroduce Immigration Bill
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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.
