Partisan haranguing took place yesterday with the Senate Democrats’ release of their version of a 26-page comprehensive immigration reform Draft for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws entitled “Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform“.  The Republicans immediately attacked it and criticized the Democrats for taking a partisan approach.

The draft includes a proposal to create a process to legalize an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and overhaul U.S. visa programs to bring foreign workers into the country to meet business needs. It also calls for a new visa class specifically for provisional workers.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president telephoned some Republican senators this week to ask them to support immigration reform. The calls were to keep a promise he made to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, stating “We are going to need both Republicans and Democrats”.  However, Democratic leaders appear increasingly to be laying the groundwork to bring an all-Democratic immigration reform bill to the Senate floor.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said lawmakers will not be intimidated by Graham’s threats to walk away from negotiating other legislation if immigration reform advances.

“I will say to him, ‘So what?’ ” she said. “We will not be intimidated by you.”

As we’ve all expected, the stage is set for quite a dramatic and compelling uphill road where immigration reform is concerned.  We will continue to report on this regularly.

Tags: Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform, Immigration Reform, State Democrat CIR Proposal

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Immigration Legislation, Immigration News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.