Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, left, and John McCain of Arizona, before their meeting on immigration with President Barack Obama, April 16, 2013. AP Photo.

Updated at 5:30 pm EDT

The White House isn’t completely satisfied with the immigration rewrite that a bipartisan group of senators has produced, two senators say, yet President Barack Obama has endorsed their work.

The White House confirmed as much after the meeting.

“While he certainly may not agree with every single part of it, he is certainly supportive of the bill we’ve put together,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in the driveway of the West Wing after a meeting with the president this afternoon. “No one is going to get everything they want in a bill, but if we meet in the middle, we can do a lot of good…. The president’s support of our proposal, even though he wouldn’t fully support it, is just where we need to be.”

“The president is very supportive,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican. “The president realizes that everybody didn’t get what they wanted completely… It is a process of compromise… The president also agrees that this is the beginning of a process — not the end… But I am very confident that at the end of the day we will have a bill to the president’s desk.”

“ This bill is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they wanted, including me,” Obama said in a statement issued later by the White House.  “But it is largely consistent with the principles that I have repeatedly laid out for comprehensive reform.  This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers.  It would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally.  And it would modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy.  These are all commonsense steps that the majority of Americans support. ”

The one thing they agree on, both the president and Schumer said, is that the bill move as quickly as possible — the senators are filing their bill tonight (see the details here), and planning swift action in the Judiciary Committee and floor action by May.

One of the differences involves a trigger that the senators have in their bill: Before any of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. can apply for work permits, let alone the path to citizenship that requires another 10 years, the Department of Homeland Security must certify that there is 90 percent effectiveness in protection of the border in “high-risk” areas — sectors where more than 30,000 people are apprehended trying to cross each year.

‘“The president didn’t believe in a trigger — we did,” Schumer said.  “We know he doesn’t agree with the trigger. His proposal didn’t have one.”

That’s part of the plan’s selling point in the Senate, and in the House as well, where opponents have in the past and once again are deriding the path to citizenship as a form of “amnesty” for the undocumented.

“You’re not going to pass a bill” unless Congress and the public is assured “there is not going to be another wave of illegal immigration,” Schumer said.

With the requirement in the Senate bill that the undocumented pay back taxes, pay fines and get in line behind legal applicants for green cards before they can seek citizenship, he said, “that’s not amnesty in anyone’s book.”

Original post is Senators: Obama Nods on Immigration ‘Compromise’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Migrant farm workers from Mexico a day of harvesting organic vegetables in Wellington, Colorado.

A group of U.S. House members will propose steps to legal status for undocumented immigrants, who shouldn’t be living here permanently without a chance to become “real Americans,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

Bringing many of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants “out of the shadows” and improving the immigration system would be “great” for businesses and the economy, Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Peter Cook for “Capitol Gains” airing April 7. The Florida Republican is a member of a bipartisan House group negotiating a plan.

“Imagine if you legalize folks who are already here,” said Diaz-Balart. “You bring them out of the shadows,” he said, “so that they can become an integral part of the economy.” He added: “For business, this is a win-win.”

Diaz-Balart said the House group won’t allow any “amnesty” for those who are unlawfully in the U.S. “There will be no amnesty in this bill,” he said. “The House is not going to support amnesty for people who are here  undocumented. ”

“It’s not good public policy to have a group of people who are in the United States permanently” that could “never aspire to become real Americans,” he said. “The flip-side of that, however, is you want to make sure that folks who broke the law do not have rights” that others who have done things legally don’t have.

The secretive bipartisan House group has been working on an overhaul of immigration laws for about four years and has “95 percent” of the bill drafted, said Diaz-Balart. A group of senators plans to introduce their own bill next week.

The Republican-led House is taking a slower approach on rewriting the immigration laws than the Democratic-led Senate. The House probably won’t take up a measure until June.

“We’re not in a rush,” Diaz-Balart said. “We don’t have deadlines that we have imposed on ourselves, other than the fact that we want to fix what’s broken.”

“I think we’re very close,” he said. “We’ve had the advantage of having time. We’ve been working on this now for a number of years,”  he said. “Most of the really thorny issues we’ve been able to hammer out and reach agreement on.”

He said: “‘We’re more concerned about getting it right  than doing it quickly.”

The Senate immigration overhaul effort is centered on creating a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. House Republicans may be more open to allowing legal residency rather than citizenship.

Republican opposition to providing a citizenship path, a major stumbling block in past efforts, has lessened since the November election, when President Barack Obama won 71 percent of Hispanic votes cast. Republican leaders have said the party needs to do more to court the fast-growing voter bloc.

Republicans need to resolve the immigration issue because it’s been a “good, successful tool” for Democrats and “political suicide for the Republicans,” Diaz-Balart said.

“Until we can get immigration off the table, we can’t even approach that community,” he said, referring to Hispanic voters. “It’s essential. Until that time, we’re in deep trouble.”

Diaz-Balart said a March 29 agreement between business and  labor leaders on allocating visas to low-skilled foreign workers may not be part of a final plan.

“I don’t think those deals are necessarily going to be the final” part of any legislation, he said, adding that such accords are “guidelines.”

Original post is House Ready to Make Undocumented ‘Real Americans:’ Diaz-Balart by Political Capital.

Photograph by J Pat Carter/AP Photo

Student Federico Paseiro wears a T-Shirt with a message that reads “Undocumented,” at a meeting for “Dreamers’ Moms” March 20, 2013 at a Miami church.

A path to citizenship?

A partisan divide?

It depends on the question.

With a Washington Post/ABC News poll today showing that 57 percent of registered voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, it finds that only 35 percent of Republicans do — part of the equation that Republican leaders in Washington are weighing in an immigration debate in which that path is the pivot on which passage of any legislation may turn.

Yet, as the folks at Talking Points Memo note — and Pew Research Center pollster Carroll Doherty readily concurs (calling it a “no-brainer that wording matters”)– it depends on how the question is asked:

See this @tpm review of recent immigration polls. No brainer thatwording matters, but so true on immigration. tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/republ…

— Carroll Doherty (@CarrollDoherty) April 3, 2013

“A Brookings Institution/Public Religion Resarch Institute poll last month found majority support for citizenship among Republicans (53 percent) and a variety of GOP-leaning demographics like white evangelicals, but asked respondents in the context of whether they preferred the earned citizenship approach to a policy of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

 Pew found that 64 percent of Republicans favored granting some legal status to the undocumented population, but only 38 percent thought this new status should include a path to citizenship. “In that case, TPM notes, “Pew asked respondents whether they thought `there should be a way for those who meet certain requirements to stay in the country legally’ or whether `they should not be allowed to stay in the country legally,’ avoiding the harsher deportation language used by Brookings.”

Original post is Path to Citizenship Partisan? It Depends by Political Capital.

Photograph by by John Moore/Getty Images

New American citizens take photos following a naturalization ceremony at the district office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on January 28, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey.

As word of a deal between business and labor leaders emerged this weekend, clearing what appeared to be the last impediment in talks among a bipartisan group of eight senators crafting a plan to overhaul immigration, one of the leaders today issued a sober reminder:

There are 92 senators from 43 other states who haven’t signed off yet, Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, a leader of the “Gang of Eight,” noted in a statement from his office today.

Indeed, that Gang of Eight has more than the Gang of 100 Senators (including a Gang of 45 Republicans who can prevent anything from reaching a vote) to worry about.

There’s also that Gang of 435 known as the House of Representatives, and, most importantly in this case, the Gang of 232 House Republicans.

In fact, Rubio’s own statement today included one easy-to-overlook word that points to a much greater point of contention between Democrats and Republicans in any immigration rewrite than the agreement on guest workers that business and labor have reached: The possible goal for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S.

Rubio’s gang has agreed to a potential path to citizenship, an arduous road that takes 13 years. The House’s Republicans are unlikely to entertain anything more than a path to legal residency, if that. If the Senate cannot accept a bill without citizenship, and the House cannot accept one with it, the business-labor deal on guest workers could by a pyrrhic victory.

Rubio’s statement offers the least inflammatory word for Republicans: Residency.

“We have made substantial progress, and I believe we will be able to agree on a legislative proposal that modernizes our legal immigration system, improves border security and enforcement and allows those here illegally to earn the chance to one day apply for permanent residency contingent upon certain triggers being met,” Rubio said in his statement today. “However, that legislation will only be a starting point.”

“We will need a healthy public debate that includes committee hearings and the opportunity for other senators to improve our legislation with their own amendments,” he said. “Eight senators from seven states have worked on this bill to serve as a starting point for discussion about fixing our broken immigration system. But arriving at a final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people’s consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren’t part of this initial drafting process. ”

“In order to succeed,” he said, “this process cannot be rushed or done in secret.”

Secrecy like the agreement over guest workers, hashed out in weeks of closed-door talks among business and union leaders and lawmakers, the results widely reported in the media this weekend.

Bloomberg’s Kathleen Hunter and Heidi Przybyla have some of the best details emerging from those talks today,  including the creation of yet another federal office, a Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research to manage the  W Visa Program.

Bloomberg’s reporters wrote on the immigration talks this morning: 

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, reached a verbal agreement during a conference call with Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat involved in the talks, according to a person familiar with the discussion, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private call. Schumer called White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to alert him to the deal, the person said.

“This issue has always been the deal-breaker on immigration reform, but not this time,” Schumer said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

The agreement “seems like a fair compromise,” said Marshall Fitz, head of immigration policy at the Democratic- aligned Center for American Progress. “The two sides have been looking at this through the prism of what they were losing. Appears they have reached a point where they both understand that they are getting a lot of what they wanted.”

“I think this agreement will seal the deal” for a Senate compromise, Fitz said. “Labor gets more data-driven accountability in the system; business gets a new worker program that is more flexible than the current patchwork of temporary visas.”u

The agreement would establish a federal bureau called the Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research and a visa program called the W Visa Program, according to the AFL-CIO. The bureau would use labor market and demographic information to identify labor shortages and to help set an annual visa cap. It would be funded through registered employer fees.

Employers seeking workers in lesser-skilled fields including hospitality, janitorial services, retail and construction could apply through the new visa program, which also would allow workers to petition for permanent status after working for one year.

The program would start with 20,000 visas in the first year, 35,000 in the second, 55,000 in the third and 75,000 in the fourth. In year five the number would grow or shrink based on a formula that takes into account the unemployment rate, the number of job openings and other factors.

The number of visas awarded annually could never exceed 200,000, and one-third of all visas would go only to businesses with under 25 employees, according to the AFL-CIO. Construction visas would be capped at 15,000 per year, addressing Trumka’s concern about a potentially adverse impact on that industry.

Yet, as Rubio reminded all today, this is all part of a “starting point.”

Original post is Immigration: Gang of 535 by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Migrant farm workers carry cases of freshly picked spinach on a farm near Wellington, Colorado.

As lawmakers work to finalize an immigration law rewrite that would provide a path to citizenship for many of the undocumented already here, fewer than half of all Americans say the undocumented should be eligible to become citizens, according to a survey run by the Pew Research Center.

While 71 percent of respondents to a new Pew poll say undocumented immigrants should be able to stay in the U.S. as long as they meet certain requirements, 24 percent say they should be eligible for permanent residency.  Only 43 percent say undocumented immigrants should be eligible for citizenship.

Another 27 percent of respondents say undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay in the country legally.

Pew’s findings come as eight senators work to finalize a bill that provides undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship, Bloomberg’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis reports. The bipartisan Senate group is pushing to unveil its measure the week of April 8.

Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants currently live in the U.S.

The national survey of 1,501 people was conducted March 13-17.

Original post is Undocumented Should Be Able to Stay, With Some Conditions: Poll by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

TV video cameras at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor.

If you’re looking for opponents of a broad immigration rewrite at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, you’ll have to do some sleuthing.

Foes who decry efforts to legalize the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants as “amnesty,” for so long the Republican Party’s defining voices on the issue, were banished from the agenda of the three-day gathering of activists. Even an unofficial panel featuring one of their most prominent thinkers failed to make it onto the glossy printed schedule distributed to attendees.

While it is listed on an online schedule of events for the Oxon Hill, Maryland, gathering, a panel entitled “Hot Issues: Electing Integrity, Immigration, and the Rule of Law,” featuring Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies — which rails against “amnesty” and calls for reducing both legal and illegal immigration — is nowhere to be found in the official brochure.

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Krikorian remarked in an e-mail.

Accidental or otherwise, the omission underscores the degree to which CPAC, where Republican activists are grappling this week with how to remake their party and retool their message after 2012 losses, is spotlighting a new stance on immigration. The group’s official panel on immigration yesterday featured five Republicans who back a path to legal status for undocumented workers, and no opponents — at least not on stage.

“If we are going to stop the tide of secular socialism, we need more allies,” declared Republican pollster Whit Ayres, adding that “a group of incredibly family-oriented, hardworking, church-going, entrepreneurial, spiritual people might be a good place to look for some more allies.”

“Legally!” came a voice from the audience.

In an interview, Krikorian said he doesn’t know whether his panel was omitted from the program because of “incompetence or conspiracy.” Yet he’s pretty sure CPAC’s organizers, including Chairman Al Cardenas and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, are using the event to press an “open borders” agenda.

“The elites are in favor of amnesty and unlimited immigration, and the rank-and-file are not,” Krikorian said. The lack of anti-immigration voices at CPAC “doesn’t tell us anything about conservative voters, but it does tell us about `Conservatives, Incorporated.’ ”

In an interview before the conference, Cardenas, a Miamian whose family immigrated from Cuba when he was a child, said he supports a path to legal residency for the undocumented. That’s what’s most likely to win support in the Republican-run House, he said, while acknowledging the Senate’s Democrats will want to see a path to full citizenship.

Still, not all speakers at the gathering hewed to the pro-immigration reform message. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who is moderating today’s hard-to-find panel, closed out yesterday’s afternoon session with a brief speech in which he said: “The massive, instant amnesty being pushed by Obama and some Republicans is unworkable, unjust, undermines the rule of law, and will harm the public safety.”

It was met with a smattering of applause, but by that time of the afternoon, most conference-goers had left the main hall, heading to their happy hours and dinners.

Original post is Immigration Reform Promoted at CPAC by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

Jeb Bush appears “locked and loaded for bear,” fellow Republican and Floridian Joe Scarborough says.

The former Florida governor’s run of interviews with a new book on immigration is the clearest sign that another Bush is looking at a run for the White House in 2016, the MSNBC talk-show host and former congressman from Pensacola says.

The tip-off, he says, is Bush’s modified stance on what Congress should offer for the millions of undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. — long a supporter of a pathway to citizenship, Bush now says in his book, “Immigration Wars,” that the undocumented should be limited to a path to legal residency. Yet, he said in many interviews this week, he could support that citizenship path if done right — which is precisely what Sen. Marco Rubio, another Floridian viewed as a 2016 Republican prospect, is doing.

“This to me seems to be the greatest sign that Jeb Bush is looking to run in 2016,” Scarborough said.

Jeb Bush 2016? video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/51…

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 6, 2013

Bush, addressing the question with us, maintained that he is trying to make immigration reform more appealing to conservatives, while open to compromise.

The reversal of course drew an onslaught of headlines and commentary about flip-flopping. Yet it was another comment Bush made at the start of his run through the media this week that drew as much attention.

He said he has not ruled out running for president in 2016.

Still, this wasn’t all that different from what he said last year, when he told Charlie Rose that 2012 probably was his “window of opportunity”  – while that didn’t mean it was the last window.

“This was probably my time,” Bush said in that interview in June on CBS News’ “This Morning.”

“There’s a window of opportunity, in life, and for all sorts of reasons,” said Bush,  former two-term Florida governor, brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush. This doesn’t mean there couldn’t be another window, he suggested.

“Have you made a decision that you don’t want to be president?” CBS host Rose asked Bush.

“I have not made that decision,”  Bush said.

Original post is Jeb Bush’s 2016 Window: Still Open by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Immigrants from the Dominican Republic wait to see an immigration lawyer on Jan. 31, 2013 in New York City. They were visiting the CUNY Citizenship Now Express Center, a non-profit that helps some 8,000 immigrants in the New York area navigate through the complicated process of acquiring U.S. Citizenship.

Updated at 11:20 am EST

As bipartisan groups of lawmakers in both the Senate and House craft proposals for revamping the nation’s immigration laws — including a potential path to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S — a national survey shows support for the biggest initiative that President Barack Obama also is promoting.

A majority of those surveyed by ABC News and the Washington Post — 55 percent — favor the path to citizenship that is among the president’s goals and also backed by a group of eight Republican and Democratic senators preparing legislation. At the same time, several House members of both parties are working on a proposal, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia this week voiced support for a citizenship plan for at least the children of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally.

Today, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio called the citizenship proposal for children “certainly worthy of consideration.”

The poll finds 41 percent in opposition to offering citizenship to any undocumented immigrants.

The White House and lawmakers alike are working on “comprehensive” plans that cover an array of issues involved in immigration. Chief among them, from the public’s point of view, is protecting the border– with 83 percent of those surveyed supporting stricter border control.

Overall support for the president’s handling of immigration is at a high point, Langer Research Associates notes in its report of its survey for ABC and the Post. More Americans approve of Obama’s overall handing of the issue than those who disapprove — by 49-43 percentage points. As recently as last summer, disapproval ran at 52 percent, approval 38 percent.

The survey of 1,038 adults conducted Jan. 30 – Feb. 3 carries a possible margin of error of 3.5 points.

See the full results of the immigration poll here.

Original post is Path to Citizenship Supported: Poll Shows Obama-Immigration Support by Political Capital.

Photographer: Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa answers a question at the National Press Club in Washington, on Jan. 14, 2013.

President Barack Obama’s winning coalition of Hispanics, blacks, women, Jews, Asians and young people marked a “seminal” event in U.S. politics, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said today.

Villaraigosa said the electorate that gave fellow Democrat Obama a second term is an indication of what future turnout will look like.

“What we saw is a seminal shift in the electorate,” he said at a National Press Club luncheon.

Republicans who continue to oppose such proposals as overhauling immigration laws run the risk of permanently exiling the party to minority status, he said. The 2012 election results might convince some Republicans to approve a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S, the mayor suggested.

“I believe it will be bipartisan,” he said of immigration legislation.

Original post is Villaraigosa: Obama’s `Seminal’ Vote Sign for Republicans on Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Falls/Daily News-Record/AP Photo

The Valley Fourth fireworks show from the Turner Pavilion lawn in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Mitt Romney is a regular marcher in the Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Fourth of July parade, a slice of Americana featuring lawn chair dancers, Elvis impersonators and a giant beer stein float.

The Romneys have owned a home in Wolfeboro, a town that calls itself “the oldest summer resort in America,” for about 15 years and have a tradition of gathering their five sons and grandchildren here. Romney said he had 30 relatives in town today.

This, however, isn’t a regular year.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was joined on the parade route not just by family, but also by Secret Service agents and an entourage of supporters in blue T-shirts. His handshakes and “Good to see you, guys,” neighborly greetings were captured by national reporters and photographers and often followed by: “Don’t forget to vote in November.”

After the 90-minute parade down Main Street, past a handful of President Barack Obama fans near Friend Street, beyond full-throated supporters of his own — chanting “Mitt, Mitt” — outside the First Christian Church of Wolfeboro, Romney gave a brief Independence Day speech with Lake Winnipesaukee as a backdrop.

“I love this country. I love the people who built this country,” he said. “I hope we recognize that it is a unique country. What makes it exceptional is our people and our passion for freedom.”

President Barack Obama, who has been a regular at the White House for four Fourths of July, offered his own celebration of Independence Day with a naturalization ceremony for active-duty members of the military in the East Room today.

“With this ceremony today — and ceremonies like it across our country — we affirm another truth:  Our American journey, our success, would simply not be possible without the generations of immigrants who have come to our shores from every corner of the globe.,” Obama told his audience. “We say it so often, we sometimes forget what it means — we are a nation of immigrants.  Unless you are one of the first Americans, a Native American, we are all descended from folks who came from someplace else — whether they arrived on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, whether they came through Ellis Island or crossed the Rio Grande.

“The story of immigrants in America isn’t a story of “them,” it’s a story of “us,”’ Obama said. “It’s who we are.  And now, all of you get to write the next chapter.”

Explaining his own campaign theme, “Believe in America,” Ronney said in New Hampshire, “We don’t want to change America into something it’s not. We don’t want to make America more like Europe or more like any other place. We want to make America more like America.”

The parade and remarks, as well as a CBS News interview taped this morning and set to air tonight, were a break from Romney’s weeklong vacation in Wolfeboro.

In a clip of the interview, Romney calls the mandate that mostAmericans have health insurance “a tax” — at odds with what his campaign has said.

Senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said July 2 that Romney believes the mandate is a “penalty,” not a tax.

The Supreme Court upheld it as a tax, within the power of Congress.

All part of the making of America.

Mark Silva contributed to this report from Washington, Julie Bykowicz in Wolfeboro. 

Original post is Making America: Romney vs. Obama by Political Capital.