The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to begin debate on a landmark immigration overhaul Tuesday, but Georgia’s senators and other Republicans said the bill needs big changes to earn their final support.
The heavily qualified support of U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss nonetheless stirred passions on both sides of the emotionally charged debate.
The bill would provide a 13-year path to citizenship for people living illegally in the U.S. while making it easier for American companies to hire foreign workers and streamlining the clogged legal immigration system.
Isakson said he will seek changes to beef up border security and alter how the bill deals with highly skilled immigrants. Chambliss said the section on agricultural guest workers “needs improvement.” Both said it’s important to keep the process moving so the bill can be improved.
Floor debate is expected to take about three weeks in the Senate, and another 60-vote hurdle awaits to end debate. The path in the Republican-run House is even more treacherous, given its more conservative lean.
“Everybody knows it’s a big issue,” Isakson said. “You’re never going to get to a resolution unless you debate it. And we may not get to a resolution, but at least we need to get all ideas on the table.”
Both senators have been besieged for months by advocates from both sides as they have approached the bill with caution.
Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, predicted that Chambliss — who is retiring from the Senate — will face protesters and Isakson will see a GOP primary challenge in 2016. Tea party activists demonstrated against the legislation last week outside of Isakson’s Atlanta office.
“They both support the bill or they would have never voted for it to move forward,” she said. “This is a terrible bill that Americans cannot afford.”
Chambliss and Isakson have also come under pressure from supporters of overhauling the nation’s immigration system. Last week, for example, Catholic nuns and the Georgia AFL-CIO rallied near Chambliss’ Atlanta office in support of “comprehensive immigration reform for the good of the people and the good of the Georgia economy.”
Charlie Flemming, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, said he was glad Georgia’s two senators voted yes Tuesday.
“We need debate,” he said. “We have to come up with a solution.”
Also Tuesday, Americans for Legal Immigration called for GOP primary challenges for all Republican senators who voted yes to begin debate on the bill. The political action committee advocates for the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
“I hope the people of Georgia tear them each a new one,” William Gheen, the PAC’s president, said of Chambliss and Isakson. “They deserve to be run out of Georgia, and I hope the people of Georgia will take care of that for us.”
Meanwhile, the American Farm Bureau Federation and Georgia Farm Bureau back the legislation. Senate Bill 744 would make it easier for the state’s $71.1 billion agricultural industry — Georgia’s largest — to hire foreign guest workers. Georgia farmers say they rely heavily on migrant Hispanic laborers because many Americans won’t do physically taxing work in the fields.
The Senate vote “is a positive sign that they recognize the importance of immigration reform for agriculture and for our whole workforce,” said Skeetter McCorkle, a board member with the Georgia Farm Bureau and co-owner of a business that raises shrubs and plants in Dearing.
Critics on the right have blasted any path to citizenship as an unfair concession to lawbreakers and have said more than assurances from the Department of Homeland Security are needed to secure the Mexican border against illegal crossings. Critics on the left say the path to citizenship is too difficult and the bill discriminates against gay immigrant couples.
But most members of Congress in both parties acknowledge that a legislative solution is needed to deal with the millions of people living here illegally. The Senate bill emerged from months of bipartisan talks, and similar discussions continue in the House, though consensus has been more elusive there.
In 2007 both Isakson and Chambliss helped craft a compromise bill but ended up voting against it — including no’s votes on the “motion to proceed” vote like the one held Tuesday — following conservative backlash. The bill died on the Senate floor.
The vote Tuesday reflected the gap between Georgia’s GOP senators and their more conservative colleagues in the U.S. House. The three House members running to succeed Chambliss, as well as a fourth candidate, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, all have declared their strident opposition to the Senate bill.
Even Rep. John Barrow, a centrist Democrat from Augusta, opposes the Senate bill. He wants stronger border security language.
Georgia GOP state legislators, who passed one of the nation's toughest immigration laws in 2011, also are lining up against the congressional effort. Ten Republican state senators wrote Isakson and Chambliss on Tuesday saying the bill "would create an even greater unemployment problem by expanding vastly the labor pool at a time when our economy is beginning a very slow and sluggish recovery process."
Many Republicans have embraced an overhaul of the immigration system with newfound vigor since President Barack Obama’s re-election, saying it is crucial to recruiting Latino voters.
Obama hosted supporters of the Senate bill Tuesday at the White House, saying it is “the best chance we’ve had in years to fix our broken immigration system.” Among those supporters was Paul Bridges, the Republican mayor of Uvalda, a town of 530 in South Georgia’s Montgomery County.
Bridges vocally opposed Georgia’s tough immigration law and said he is firmly behind the new Senate effort. The immigrants who pick Vidalia onions and gather pine straw in South Georgia — and the businesses who employ them — will be greatly served, he said.
“This is a broken immigration system that has crippled the farming industry, and that can’t be repaired by farmers,” Bridges said. “We’ve got to rely on Congress to fix that problem for us.”
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