WASHINGTON — Following an agreement by President Bush and his Mexican counterpart to renew long-stalled immigration talks, momentum has surged in Congress for a bill to help an estimated 500,000 undocumented farm workers gain legal residency in the United States.
The bill, which would also expand a foreign guest-worker program that agricultural businesses covet, is gaining crucial bipartisan support. Endorsements came this week from the second-ranking Senate Republican and both the GOP chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I just want to do what's right," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Judiciary Committee chairman, a central player in all immigration legislation. Hatch said the bill would "help our neighbors to the south" and vulnerable immigrants who perform "back-breaking hard work" in U.S. farm fields.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) also pitched the bill directly to Bush at a White House breakfast this week. Afterward, she would not describe the president's reaction. White House officials have not commented publicly.
But Bush signaled a new willingness to deal on immigration in his Oct. 20 meeting in Thailand with Mexican President Vicente Fox. The two presidents agreed to restart negotiations shelved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed security lapses connected with foreign visitors to the United States.
Pelosi said Friday that top Republicans in the House and Senate were supporting the farm-worker legislation and that passage could come as early as this year. "I think all they have to do is take it up in the Senate and send it over to the House," Pelosi said.
The bill, addressing the status of a fraction of more than 8 million illegal immigrants in this country, is part of a broader immigration and border-security agenda developing between Mexico and the United States. It must overcome criticism in Congress from advocates of tighter immigration controls, who decry any measure that they say rewards lawbreakers.
But the bill is a priority for Mexico because many of the immigrants who could benefit are Mexican nationals who form the backbone of an underground economy in California and other states. In a speech here to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mexican Ambassador Juan Jose Bremer said that the Mexican government was following the bill with "great interest" and that its "provisions and effects would certainly be very positive" for Mexican farm workers.
