Bill reforming immigration expected to be completed this week

A bill to overhaul the US immigration system would likely be completed by the end of this week, senators said yesterday.

New York Democrat senator Charles Schumer said senators in the bipartisan “group of eight” have resolved all major issues in a pending deal and their staffs are putting the bill into legislative language.

“All of us have said that there’ll be no deal until the eight of us agree to a big, specific bill, but hopefully we can get that done by the end of the week,” Schumer said.

“There have been kerfuffles along the way, but each one of those thus far has been settled.”

All eight members must then review the legislative language, he said.

The US Chamber of Commerce, the biggest US business group, and the AFL-CIO, the largest labour federation, reached agreement on a guest worker programme last month, clearing the way for the writing of a bill.

The legislation will include an earned pathway to US citizenship for an estimated 11m undocumented immigrants, bolstered border security, and ways for business to meet the need for both high- and low-skilled workers.

Republican senator John McCain of Arizona agreed that a bill would be ready soon and said the legislation would address the needs of both business and labour with a guest-worker programme.

“We need to have a path to citizenship, and we need to have secure borders... And we also have to have a robust guest-worker programme so people will not hire someone who is here illegally,” McCain said.

A bipartisan group from the Republican-led House of Representatives is attempting its own version of immigration reform. If the Senate and House bills pass their respective chambers, they would have to be reconciled before a final version is voted on and then sent to US president Barack Obama for signing into law.