Senate to Revive Immigration Bill

A week after the immigration reform bill hit partisan snags over dozens of proposed changes, Senate leaders announced Thursday that they have agreed to bring the controversial bill back to the floor in three weeks.

Under the agreement, the Senate will consider 22 amendments from Democrats and 22 from Republicans. The legislation stalled last week in part because Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wanted to block most of those amendments.

More InsideReid issued a joint statement Thursday with Minority Leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. It read in part: “We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion of the energy bill.”

On Tuesday, President Bush made a rare visit to  Capitol Hill to coax Republican leaders in the Senate who stopped the bill to help revive it. In exchange, he announced $4.4 billion in spending on border security – a major concern for many Republicans.

Among other things, the fragile bill calls for increased border security, a crackdown on employers who hire undocumented immigrants and a complicated path to citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

If passed, the legislation would be the first to overhaul the broken immigration system in 20 years.