US: Republicans in Congress are pushing for votes this week on bills that would make it easier to arrest and jail illegal immigrants and build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border.
The bills do not include any plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to remain in the country legally, and immigrants' rights campaigners fear they could make a deal on comprehensive immigration reform more difficult to achieve
Republicans fear that voters will punish them in November if they fail to take any action to stem the numbers of illegal immigrants streaming across the border from Mexico. Conservatives in the House of Representatives are resisting a compromise with the Senate over a plan to allow millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the US and eventually apply for citizenship.
The Senate yesterday started debating the border fence bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last week. The House is expected to pass three further bills that would toughen penalties for smuggling illegal immigrants, allow some illegal immigrants to be detained indefinitely and authorise local police to arrest illegal immigrants and transfer them to federal custody.
Democrats fear that Republicans will seek to attach the new measures to a Homeland Security bill just before November's elections, forcing the opposition party vote against a popular bill if it wants to oppose the immigration measures.
"What we're doing here today is about November 7th," said Senate minority leader Harry Reid. "They've had five years to secure our borders. Now with the elections looming, suddenly they want to get serious."
Republican sponsors of comprehensive immigration reform are also unhappy with the idea of going ahead with a security-only Bill and they could wreck the Republican leadership's plan by loading the Bill with amendments unacceptable to conservatives.
Majority leader Senator Bill Frist said the issue of how to deal with millions of illegal immigrants already in the US had become a "fundamental sticking point" in trying to reach agreement with the House on a comprehensive bill.
He said the border fence proposal was the best alternative if Congress wanted to do something about immigration before the elections.
"Let's focus on a problem the American people understand and that is, we have hundreds of thousands of people coming across our border every year into our country," he said.
President George Bush this week reaffirmed his support for a comprehensive immigration bill but said he would sign a border security bill if Congress passed it.