Gutierrez-Flake Propose New Immigration Plan

WASHINGTON - Bipartisan legislation to be unveiled Thursday in the House of Representatives would offer temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants but would require them to leave the country before they could be eligible for permanent residency and U.S. citizenship.

The bill by Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is the first major immigration legislation to be introduced in the current session of Congress, as lawmakers address the status of more than 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally.

A comprehensive Senate immigration bill died in the previous, Republican-controlled Congress amid intense opposition from Republican members, who rebuffed President Bush’s call for a sweeping overhaul of immigration laws. With Democrats in control of Congress, Bush again has made immigration a centerpiece of his domestic agenda and thinks he has a strong chance to succeed now.

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The Gutierrez-Flake proposal includes many of the ingredients of the failed Senate bill. It would create a guest-worker program that would enable foreign workers to stay in the country for up to six years to hold jobs that U.S. workers have bypassed.

Bush has insisted that a guest-worker program be part of any immigration bill to give U.S. businesses a steady source of foreign workers to fill what they say is a chronic labor shortage in low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Under the Gutierrez-Flake bill, qualified foreign guest workers would get three-year visas that they could renew for another three years, then they’d be required to return home.

Flake said in an interview Wednesday that illegal immigrants who were in the country now also could be eligible to work legally here for up to six years if they paid back taxes and fines, learned English and passed criminal background checks.

If they wanted to stay in the country to be eligible for a green card - denoting permanent legal residence - and eventual citizenship, they’d be required to leave the U.S., most likely for Mexico or Canada, and register back in the United States through a port of entry.

The so-called “touch-back” provision was also in the Senate bill, in an attempt to soften ...