Even with the news of the sequester taking most of the headlines on Capitol Hill these days, immigration reform is still a hot topic and one prominent senator addressed how a new bill would not allow violent offenders to become U.S. citizens.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told an audience at the Ukranian Cultutal Center in Chicago Saturday that no comprehensive immigration reform bill that was passed by Congress would give any pathway to citizenship to dangerous criminals.
However, Durbin also said that the bill being worked on in the Senate will not allow immigrants to be deported for traffic offenses such as speeding or failure to carry a driver's license.
Durbin, a member of the "Gang of Eight" bipartisan Senate group of Repubicans and Democrats, added that the path to citizenship will not be an easy one, particularly for those who have managed to hide their immigration status. According to Durbin, any new immigration law will likely require such immigrants to reveal a paper trail.
Durbin's statement comes on the heels of news this past week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released hundreds of detained immigrants around the nation held in detention cells due to the looming automatic budget cuts that will come as a result of the budget sequester. Republicans lashed out at the decision.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, called the move a scare tactic from the Obama administration regarding the budget, while Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also had harsh words for the president.
"The Administration is using the sequester as a convenient excuse to bow to political pressure from the amnesty groups, as it did with its unilateral decision to confer legal status on millions who are not lawfully present," Sessions said, adding that the cuts to immigration services "could be much more safely and rationally achieved" through other means.
On Sunday, Durbin, who is the U.S. Senate Majority Whip for the Democrats, said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that his "Gang of Eight" had been working around the clock as they work towards the completion of an immigration reform bill that they can submit to Congress within the next few months.
We "have really buckled down," Durbin said. "We meet virtually every day in a bipartisan effort to write an immigration bill. The president supports this."
Given the partisan environment that has been dominating politics in Washington in Congress for years--most recently through the sequester thanks to the impasse reached between Democrats and Republicans in Congress on a new budget deal--Durbin suggested that his bipartisan group could even serve as an example for future issues on how Republicans and Democrats can come to the table and work to a solution.
"I think people who have given up on Congress would be encouraged to know there's a real dialogue, bipartisan dialogue, and perhaps, just perhaps we can set the stage for a more positive dialogue when it comes to the budget," Durbin said.
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