Illegals bill stems traffic only 25%

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The Senate’s immigration bill will cut annual illegal immigration by just 25 percent, and the bill’s new guest-worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal aliens within a decade, Congress’ accounting arm said yesterday.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in its official cost estimate that many guest workers will overstay their time in the plan, with the number totaling a half-million in 2017 and reaching 1 million a decade later.

“We anticipate that many of those would remain in the United States illegally after their visas expire,” CBO said of the guest-worker program.

In a blow to President Bush’s timetable, the CBO said the security “triggers” that must be met before the guest-worker program can begin won’t be met until 2010. Mr. Bush had hoped to have those triggers — setting up a verification system, deploying 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents and constructing hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers — completed about the time he leaves office in January 2009.

The bill is the result of a “grand bargain” reached by a small bipartisan group of senators and the Bush administration in closed-door negotiations. Under the deal, illegal aliens get immediate legal status and a pathway to citizenship, businesses get access to a stream of temporary workers in the future, and future immigration will take into account needed skills.

Senators returned yesterday after a weeklong vacation to make a last push to pass the bill by Friday.

The Senate yesterday adopted four amendments by unanimous consent, including one that curbs courts’ ability to review revocations of visas. But because of the slow pace of work before their vacation, senators have most of the contentious votes still to come.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, warned Democrats not to try to cut off Republicans’ amendments.

“We need to have maximum opportunity for the largest number of amendments to be considered before we entertain the notion of shutting down debate on this important measure,” he said.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the top Republican in the negotiations for the grand bargain, yesterday laid out the “killer” amendments he said will break the grand bargain and cause him to have to oppose the bill: creating a separate employer-sponsored system of up to 300,000 new green cards; giving temporary workers a path to citizenship; and changing the dates or definitions to allow broader family migration.

Mr. Kyl said if any of those passed, “I certainly would not support the legislation, I would do everything I can to get it defeated.”

But Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, said he will insist on amendments to change the dates for family immigration and rejected Mr. Kyl’s threat.

“No one has a monopoly on how best to provide for comprehensive immigration reform,” Mr. Menendez said.

Meanwhile, the bill appears to have picked up steam on the left, with immigrant rights groups saying that even though they aren’t happy with the bill, they want the Senate to pass it.

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