U.S. immigration bill attacked from left and right

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The fate of the immigration deal between President George W. Bush and a group of U.S. senators appeared uncertain on Friday as it drew heavy criticism from both the right and the left.

With the Senate to debate the highly divisive issue next week, the immediate reaction to the plan to grant legal status to some 12 million illegal immigrants suggested it could face an uphill battle even there, where passage was considered more likely than in the House of Representatives.

The House last year declined to even take up comprehensive legislation.

Conservative Republicans were quick to criticize the plan's main provision for illegal immigrants who arrived in the country before January 2007, even though Bush hopes the plan's passage would provide an elusive legislative victory. They view granting the right to stay as rewarding those who broke U.S. law.

"I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty," said Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican.

Complaints came from Democrats as well.

"This amnesty plan is no fairy tale -- it is a bad dream," Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said.

Democrats' major concerns include that the temporary worker program does not provide a path to permanent residence and new limits it would place on migration to reunite families.

Despite the apparent obstacles, lawmakers and administration officials who helped broker the deal are optimistic that deep partisan divisions that doomed legislation in the past can be overcome and Congress will send a bill to Bush for his signature by the end of the year.

'A VERY GOOD CHANCE'

"I think it has got a very good chance," Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, one of the administration negotiators, said in an interview. "The more time goes by, the more people realize that if we don't have this bill we have nothing and nothing means the status quo."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush would keep up efforts to push the immigration bill through Congress.

"It's no secret that the president's personally very committed to this issue," he said. "There's a long way to go and we hope we can get there."

The proposal ties border security and work place enforcement to plans to give the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants legal status, creation of a temporary worker program and a new merit-based system for future newcomers.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney objected to proposed limits on family-based migration and said the temporary worker program that would force laborers to return to their home countries after working in the United States amounts to "virtual servitude, where workers' fates are tied to their employers and their workplace rights are impossible to exercise."