Immigration overhaul’s time is now, Obama says

— President Barack Obama on Tuesday sought to build on gathering political momentum for revisions to the nation’s immigration laws, giving cautious endorsement to a new Senate blueprint and offering more details of his own plan.

Speaking at an event in Las Vegas designed to highlight the growing clout of Hispanic voters, Obama urged lawmakers to quickly pass comprehensive legislation that includes tighter border security, a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million illegal aliens nowin the country and a system to expand the pool of legal immigrant workers.

“The time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform,” Obama told a cheering audience at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, where twothirds of the students are Hispanic. “We can’t allow immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate.”

Obama’s appearance marked the start of his public campaign in support of an issue that has long languished in Congress. The November election, in which 71 percent of Hispanic voters backed the president, has changedthe political calculation for Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

His speech comes a day after four Democratic and four Republican senators released their own framework for immigration legislation, which Obama said is “very much in line with the principles I proposed and campaigned on.”

“For the first time in many years, Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together,” Obama said. “At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon.”

Even with increasing bipartisan support, passage of an immigration bill is far from a sure bet. While the president is holding off on offering his own legislative proposal, some elements of his blueprint released Tuesday indicate differences that could derail the bill.

“There are a lot of ideas about how best to fix our broken immigration system,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, said in an e-mail. “Any solution should be a bipartisan one, and we hope the president is careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate.”

One major point of contention is how to proceed with citizenship for illegal aliens in the U.S. Republicans are pressing to make that process contingent on tightening border security and better tracking of people in the U.S. on visas. A commission of governors, community members and attorneys general living on the Southwest border would make a recommendation when the security measures are completed.

The White House plan doesn’t link citizenship to security, out of concern that a longer process could make it effectively impossible for those aliens to get full status.

Shortly after Obama finished speaking, cracks emerged between the White House and the group of eight senators. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, faulted Obama for not making a citizenship pathway contingent on tighter border security.

“The president’s speech left the impression that he believes reforming immigration quickly is more important than reforming immigration right,” Rubio said in a statement.

The president urged lawmakers to avoid making the citizenship pathway so difficult that it would appear out of reach for many illegal aliens.

“We all agree that these men and women have to earn their way to citizenship,” he said. “But for comprehensive immigration reform to work, it must make clear from the outset that there is a pathway to citizenship.”

“It won’t be a quick process, but it will be a fair process,” Obama added.

AP/ISAAC BREKKEN “We can’t allow immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate,” President Barack Obama said Tuesday in Las Vegas.

The president also supports equal treatment of samesex couples when one partner is from outside the U.S. That provision isn’t included in the Senate framework and may be a flash point with Republicans who oppose offering equal rights to same-sex couples.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, who is part of the Senate immigration group, called the issue a “red flag” in an interview Tuesday on CBS This Morning.

Obama said if legislation gets mired in Congress he would send his own plan to the Capitol and insist that lawmakers vote on it “right away.”

“He has put his arms around the four senators on the Democratic side and the Republican side, but with the caveat he’s not going to wait around forever to actually have legislation that we move on,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in Washington.

Obama’s plan would require people living in the U.S. illegally to register, submit biometric data, pass criminal background and national security checks, and pay fees and taxes owed before becoming eligible for legal status.

After eight years, they would be eligible for legal permanent resident status and five years later could apply for citizenship. They enter the green card application system behind everyone else already waiting for permits. Children brought to the country illegally by their parents would be eligible for expedited citizenship if they attend college or complete two years of military service.

The growing political clout of Hispanic voters, who made up 10 percent of the electorate and 16.7 percent of the population, has prompted Republicans to re-evaluate their long-standing opposition to immigration-law changes.

“The political winds have changed,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is part of the bipartisan group. “After the 2012 election, it’s pretty obvious that we’re going the wrong way with Hispanics.”

The immigration plan may face an even tougher road in the Republican-led House, which is dominated by lawmakers who have expressed little interest in immigration laws beyond tightening border security.

The debate has drawn in a wide array of religious organizations, law enforcement officials and companies, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Google Inc., as they seek to hire more foreign workers.

Of the 47 million new workers entering the labor force between 2010 and 2050, a projected 37.6 million, or 80 percent, will be Hispanic, according to an October 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Their share of the work force will grow to 18.6 percent by 2020 and to 30 percent in 2050, doubling from 15 percent in 2010, according to the bureau.

Washington last took up immigration changes in a serious way in 2007, when then-President George W. Bush pressed for an overhaul. The initial efforts had bipartisan support but eventually collapsed in the Senate because of a lack of GOP support.

Also Tuesday, in another sign of Congress’ increased attention to immigration issues, a group of four senators introduced legislation aimed at allowing more high-tech workers into the country, a longtime priority of technology businesses. The bill by Republicans Rubio and Orrin Hatch and Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons would increase the number of visas available for hightech workers, make it easier for them to change jobs once here and for their spouses to work and aim to make it easierfor foreigners at U.S. universities to remain here upon graduation.

Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Lerer, Kathleen Hunter, Julianna Goldman, Bennett Roth and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News and by Julie Pace, Darlene Superville and Erica Werner of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/30/2013

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