Agreement in the US Senate - by 62 to 36 votes - on its version of a bill that would give most illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens is welcome. The bill, largely authored by Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy, also provides for a guest worker programme and a tightening of border security, with 370 miles of triple-layer fences along the Mexican border.
But the strong bipartisan vote does not guarantee that the measure, which has the support of the Bush administration, will become law. To do so it must now be reconciled with the hawkish, anti-immigrant measure proposed by the House of Representatives whose emphasis is almost entirely on border security.
The divisions between the two houses, both with Republican majorities, reflect an important struggle in an election year for the soul of the party. The Senate is closer to Mr Bush's vision of a "compassionate" conservatism that also hopes to reach out to the vast Hispanic community in the South. The House, however, is deeply opposed to provisions for a "path to citizenship" which many members, 200 facing re-election battles, regard as a reward for illegality. Anti-immigrant pressures have seen them also oppose the guest worker programme that would admit 200,000 foreign workers a year. Although scaremongers have put the numbers likely to be admitted under the reformed law at more than 100 million over two decades, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it at a more modest 7.8 million in 10 years.
Mr Bush's low poll ratings and the imminence of the mid-terms mean the president has less traction than ever with party members in the House. The difficult conciliation process that representatives of both houses must now embark on may well not succeed, though there are some Republicans in the House hinting at a willingness perhaps to go with the guest worker programme.
Democrats insist, however, they will not support a bill that does not place most of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants, seven million of whom have been in the US for over five years, on a path to citizenship.
That position has the support of the Irish community and Government, and was the focus of the lobbying by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Mexico's President Vicente Fox, both in the US last week. Mr Ahern is correct to press the case of the undocumented Irish. Many of them, well settled into their new communities and contributing productively to the US economy, find themselves in a cruel limbo socially and increasingly threatened with summary deportation.
But the Minister would have done well not to try to make the specious case that they are somehow different from, and more deserving than, illegal immigrants in Ireland. Mr Ahern clearly feels such a rationalisation is necessary to avoid the charge of inconsistency in the Government's approach to both groups. The way to avoid such charges, however, would be to be consistent in his attitude to immigrants generally.