President Obama has largely endorsed an immigration plan that includes a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. as well as tougher border security, a mandatory system for verifying workers’ immigration status and “bringing our legal immigration system into the 21st Century” with streamlined processes to handle future flows of newcomers.
According to NPR, Obama, while embracing the plan proposed by a bipartisan coalition of U.S senators, warned “lawmakers, however, that he’d ‘send up my own proposal and insist that they vote on it right away’ if they steer negotiations on a bill into partisan gridlock.
The NPR report also said some of the issues Obama avoided will figure prominently in lawmakers’ deliberations, such as the sensitive question about the length of time those in the country illegally could be forced to wait before applying for citizenship and a proposal offered by the senators that U.S. borders be secured before illegal immigrants can seek green cards.
Critics also noted, the article reported, the president’s decision to omit from his speech a provision in his plan to allow a foreign partner in a same-sex relationship to apply for the green card. The Senate plan doesn’t include the provision.
“That would be a poison pill that would guarantee the whole thing would collapse,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration and stricter enforcement, told NPR. “How could the Catholic Church and evangelical groups support that?”
