In the wake of all the recent moves designed to bring changes to the nation's immigration laws, President Obama and an old political rival, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will meet next week to discuss the work on immigration overhaul.
McCain, who is part of the "Gang of Eight" bipartisan U.S. Senate group working on a bill to bring comprehensive immigration reform, will meet Tuesday with President Obama, whom he ran against in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections.
"The president of the United States has supported our efforts. In fact we will be meeting with the president on Tuesday," McCain said during a visit to Mexico, according to CBS News.
On Friday, Sen. McCain had a busy day during his tour in Mexico, meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to discuss immigration policy.
Pena Nieto has previously stated that his newly-elected administration was going to focus on reducing violence from the drug trade plaguing Mexico instead of looking to seize shipments or to apprehend or kill more cartel leaders.
"I have no doubt about his commitment," McCain said of Pena Nieto. "I think he feels that policies and practices of the previous administration need to be examined."
Meanwhile, on the immigration front, it has been a busy month concerning news on immigration reform. Earlier this week, President Obama's immigration reform proposal was leaked by USA Today, which drew criticism from Republicans as being incomplete and interfering with the bipartisan panel's attempts to come up with a bill to that end.
The White House denied leaking the bill and President Obama said that he believed despite the leak, there wouldn't be a negative impact on the panel's work on a compromise bill.
Sen. McCain said he was "guardedly optimistic" that his group of Democrat and Republican senators--including prominent senators such as Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla.--could get a deal done that would reform immigration by the end of the month.
"There's still a number of agreements that need to be made before I can assure you that we will have a resolution," McCain said.
At the core of the agreements that both Obama and the Senate need to agree on is a way to create a pathway to citizenship for a majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. So far, both the president's and the bipartisan panel's plan have a conditional pathway to citizenship at the center of their proposals.
While there are several differences, both sides want to increase border security and enforce better immigration checks from businesses on employees.
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