WASHINGTON — Two Senate Republicans reached an agreement on Thursday on a plan to strengthen border security with the bipartisan group of eight senators that drafted an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, raising hopes that the new deal could build Republican support for the immigration legislation being debated on the Senate floor.
The deal, according to aides with knowledge of the discussions, will call for what was described as a “border surge” that nearly doubles the current border patrol force to 40,000 agents from 21,000, as well as the completion of 700 miles of fence on the southern border. The additional border agents, an aide said, would cost roughly $30 billion. Details of the agreement were to be announced later Thursday. The expected endorsement of the proposal by several Senate Republicans would be a significant boost to the measure, which backers hope to push through the Senate by the end of next week.
The two Republican senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, have been working behind the scenes over the past few days to come up with a provision that would appease hesitant Republicans and help garner broad bipartisan support for the bill. On Wednesday evening they said they were close.
“We’ve had a really good day,” Mr. Corker said Wednesday. “I feel good about where we are.”
The two senators briefed their Republican colleagues at a party lunch, and afterward said they were heartened by the positive response. Their push to strengthen border security, they said, was given a boost by a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday that found that the current bill — without any additional border security provisions — would decrease annual illegal immigration by only 25 percent.
“I don’t know what the hell is going to happen,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, “but we’re on the verge of doing something dramatic on the border, and if it happens it will be due to Hoeven and Corker and a lot of our colleagues.”
Mr. Graham, a member of the bipartisan group that drafted the original legislation, served as the group’s conduit to Mr. Corker and Mr. Hoeven to ensure that their provision was acceptable to both Democrats and Republicans.
The Corker-Hoeven proposal would be an alternative to an amendment introduced by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. Mr. Cornyn’s plan would create strict goals that would need to be met before more than 11 million undocumented immigrants could start on the path to citizenship and attain legal status, including a 90 percent apprehension rate of illegal crossers at the southern border and a biometric exit system at all airports and seaports.
Democrats consider Mr. Cornyn’s plan a “poison pill” that is logistically hard to achieve and could indefinitely delay citizenship for those covered by the measure.
Originally, Mr. Corker and Mr. Hoeven were considering a provision that would have required a 90 percent effectiveness rate in apprehending or turning back illegal crossers, using a combination of conventional border infrastructure, like fencing and observation towers, and high-tech elements including heat-sensing cameras and drones.
“It has to be measurable, objective metrics so we know the border is secure and so that folks feel that it’s attainable and we can agree that we have a secure border,” Mr. Hoeven said. “We’re trying to come up with something where we can get Republicans and Democrats to agree on.”
Democrats, however, still objected to the 90 percent trigger linking border security to a pathway to citizenship, and on Wednesday, Mr. Corker said they had “come up with a solution.”
According to aides with knowledge of the discussions, the Republicans agreed to make the 90 percent figure a goal rather than a requirement, in exchange for a detailed border security plan that lays out serious assurances of both manpower and resources at the southern border.
Visit Source: NYT > Global Home http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/politics/2-gop-senators-reach-deal-on-border-security-plan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss