WASHINGTON – Not long after the pubs shut their doors for the night, the Bronx’s Little Ireland sprang back to life yesterday. Hundreds of the city’s newest wave of illegal Irish immigrants – students and carpenters, waitresses and nannies – descended on Woodlawn’s main strip, bundled against the cold and cracking jokes as they waited in the dark to board buses headed for Washington.

A few hours later, as the Senate Judiciary Committee began its second day of crafting an immigration bill, the busloads from the Bronx joined nearly 2,000 other Irish from across the country, canvassing the halls of Congress in T-shirts emblazoned with “Legalize the Irish.”

Of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in America, the 50,000 illegal Irish are just a tiny drop in the pool, but yesterday the newly formed Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform proved a unique force in the drive for a legalization program.

For months, the absence of Senators Schumer and Clinton from Congress’s debate on comprehensive immigration reform has frustrated New York’s immigrant leaders. But there was no question where New York’s senators stood yesterday afternoon as they addressed the Irish. Mrs. Clinton warned that the Republican-controlled House had moved toward creating a “police state.” Mr. Schumer called the House bill that passed last year “legislation that turns its back on America.”

Joining Senators McCain and Kennedy, they played to the crowd with strong commitments to create an “earned-legalization program.” Senator Clinton, who until now has not disclosed her stance on immigration reform in detail publicly, came out swinging. Speaking to a crowd already fired up by addresses from Senators Schumer and McCain that greeted her with a rousing standing ovation and stomping feet, she began by saying, “I’m here to announce the surrender. I’ll tell you there’s never been a presence like we’ve had today.”

The energy the Irish could bring to the debate was not lost on politicians yesterday. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat of New York, noted, “I’m one of the few elected officials here who is not running for president.” One of those potential candidates, Senator McCain, after three standing ovations before he had a chance to start speaking, went on to counsel the crowd, “your cause today is not just for the Irish, your cause is some Hispanic woman who is washing dishes but cannot join us.”

In Mrs. Clinton’s comments, and in a simultaneous four-page letter sent outlining her principals for comprehensive change to the immigration laws, she criticized the House bill, saying criminalizing illegal immigrants and those who help them, “would turn millions and millions of Americans into lawbreakers because they want to continue the tradition of outreach and assistance that has been the hallmark of our nation.”

The tact she promoted, instead, strongly resembled those her potential Republican challenger for President in 2008, Senator McCain, proposed last year in a bill he coauthored with Senator Kennedy. They include stepped-up border protection, greater cross-border cooperation, family reunification, and, in what received the loudest cheers from the crowd, “a path to earned-legalization.”

In the vocabulary of immigration reform, “earned-legalization” has emerged as the magic word for illegal immigrants and their advocates. Rather than an amnesty, or a blanket legalization where past trespasses are forgotten, under the McCain-Kennedy plan it would require immigrants to fulfill certain requirements to receive a green card, such as paying a $2,000 fine, background checks, learning English, and completing a temporary status. Critics, however, say despite these measures it is just an amnesty in disguise that rewards unlawful behavior with citizenship.

The Senate last week appeared to be following the House’s lead in rejecting an earned legalization. After months of conflicting immigration bills, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, had introduced an immigration plan that would create two statuses for temporary workers: One for illegal immigrants already in the country, and another for those who wanted to come as guest workers.

As the Irish moved through the halls of Congress yesterday morning, their mission was to let representatives know they would not stand for that. “We don’t want a three-year Mickey Mouse visa where we’ll have to go home after that,” said Samantha, a bartender in Yonkers who has emerged as a leader of the Irish lobby.

Like most of the Irish, Samantha, 30, who graduated with a degree in psychology in Ireland, came to America as a tourist and stayed on for years after it expired, thinking she would be able to get a visa. Ireland’s economy is thriving and Samantha could survive financially in her home country, but she says she prefers her life in Yonkers.

Life as an illegal immigrant stopped her from moving forward in psychology and prevented visits back and forth to America and Ireland, but until two years ago, the challenges were not debilitating. Then the state Department of Motor Vehicles began to limit driver’s licenses to those with valid Social Security numbers. “That’s when we got together and said we’ve got to do something or we’ll leave like everyone else,” Samantha said. “America is really forcing Irish out of this country. This is the do-or-die year.”

For a little more than six months, Samantha and her friends and neighbors – a plumber who owns his own business but now has to hire a driver, a certified nurse who cannot work – plotted with little effect. Than last December they got word of a larger effort funded by the Irish government, the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. Since then it’s been a whirlwind: Town Halls across the country and a fundraiser at Gaelic Park in the Bronx on Sunday that raised $60,000 on Sunday night, all leading to the lobby day in Washington.

The Irish immigrants lobbying to get visas appeared to take some congressmen by surprise yesterday. Senator DeMint, a Republican of South Carolina, returned to his office and found Samantha’s contingent of Irish parked in front.

Samantha told him “there’s no way for the Irish to get visas” and asked him to support the earned-legalization program in the Kennedy-McCain bill. Mr. DeMint appeared sold on the idea that the group of Irish “is a good example of the folks we’d like to have work here” but would not support a broad legalizing program. “America’s security has got to come first,” he said.

Senator Kennedy said that security and a legalization program were not exclusionary, particularly when it comes to the Irish.