Immigration Reform News 2013: Republicans Seek New Ways to Track Foreign Students

The Senate Judiciary Committee is moving to make foreign students easier to track in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

While the alleged bombers immigrated to the United States as children legally, there have been intimations of assistance after the fact from two foreign students who had overstayed their visas.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced an amendment to the bipartisan immigration bill currently being debated by the committee that would provide visa information about foreign students to the border patrol. If that information isn't furnished within 120 days, some student visas could be revoked.

It seems likely that amendment will pass, after a series of amendments sponsored by Republicans aiming to derail or delay immigration reform were shot down by the Judiciary Committee, which is headed by Democrats.

Last week, amendments that would have halted reform until the Republican-led House decided the borer was secure, effectively delaying it indefinitely, were squashed.

Today, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the most outspoken immigration reform opponent on the committee, proposed an amendment that would have reduced the number of legal immigrants allowed by the legislation to 20 million over 10 years. That proposal was shot down by every other member of the committee, Republican and Democrat. Many business groups have only signed on for immigration reform because they believe they will be able to hire more workers from overseas, a plan labor groups agreed to after receiving concessions on wages.

Sessions also failed to win passage of an amendment that would have required the implementation of a new system of biometric identification, a plan that both parties said would be too costly to set up and execute in the short run.

A measure proposed by Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California restricting the use of unmanned drones to within three miles of the border passed.