Chances for immigration bill

About 50-50. I think we need to complete action or come pretty close to completing action this year to have something really happen.

When it comes over to the House, I think they make a huge mistake if they try to force it down the throats of the members. You've got to have a rule that's fairly open that gives people plenty of time to debate it so at least people feel they had a chance to get their part of the pie considered. And then you'll still have a good number of people who won't support anything. The question is can we put enough people together where we can cobble an overall approach that I think might work.

I think we've moved the Senate and the administration to a position where they understand that enforcement is extremely important for the acceptance of the American people in addition to getting a majority of the House and the Senate.

Lessons from 1986 reforms

One of the lessons I learned out of being there 21 years ago is that we failed with enforcement after we passed that bill in '86, and there's a legitimate reason people ought to be suspicious of promises of Congress unless we show something.

The second part is, do you have a continuing need for temporary foreign workers? I think you do. I am leery of the Senate proposal that says you're here two years, you're out one year, you're here two years, most of you can't bring your family in, 20 percent can bring your family in. I think you're setting yourself up for people who are going to be here permanently. That's why my temporary worker program (HR 2413) is you're in for 10 months out of the year, you've got to return for two months, you don't bring your families in, you can renew that as long as you want. My suggestion is you try a temporary worker program that's truly temporary.

The third thing is: What do you do with the people who have been here for a long period of time? That's where I find real fault with the Senate proposal. It says as long as you got in by January of this year, you're considered someone with deep roots in the community. I said to a Democratic colleague of mine ... "You've got to have roots in the community. This is January." He said, "Well, maybe there's a little stem, you know, shoots."

I say if you've been in this country five years, you're not a ward of the state, you've got a means of support, you haven't committed another type of crime, you agree that you'll either learn English or you already know English and you'll engage in a study of American government and civics, then we give you a new permanent status. You don't have derivative rights to bring in other family members and you aren't on the road to citizenship. If you want to get on the road to citizenship, you've got to go to your home country, apply for a green card like everybody else and then wait in line.

On work visas

I think agriculture has proven that it does need foreign workers. I think in construction trades, why we can't attract our own minorities, particularly African American young men, is a question we had better deal with.

With highly skilled workers, we reached the yearly number by February of this year. ... We know that our companies have the flexibility, if we force them, to open plants in other countries if we can't attract the talent here.

Agriculture on the one hand and high-tech on the other are caught up in the overall immigration argument. And while people are focusing on enforcement, as I think they should, that's good. But it doesn't answer those questions of agriculture and of high-tech.

On employer sanctions

I want them to be tough. I'm not sure draconian is appropriate. Tough is appropriate. If I'm an employer and I've made legitimate attempts to vet my workforce, should you still have such a sanction on me if I screw up in some paperwork form that is out of whack with what I did wrong?

On security issues

Part of the argument for trying to pare down illegal immigration is to have a system by which people who seek work for which there are jobs in this country can come across legally, so that we can narrow the columns that people are coming in on.

Unless we get this under control we can't do the sufficient kind of layered defenses on our borders that would help us on a risk-based approach to be able to target those who are more likely to be threats to us. We're trying to reduce the size of the haystack. We're looking for needles in a haystack. The haystack's too big right now.

Bipartisan support?

The president has to rely on Democratic leadership to carry his bill. But it remains that in the House and Senate, Republicans are crucial to get you across the goal. We aren't there yet. And that's why you saw a very negative reaction by conservative Republicans this last week after the president's comments about the immigration bill, where he appeared to suggest to people we're against this for a whole assortment of reasons rather than just having a good faith disagreement with him. That hurt him very, very badly.

The White House seems to get off message at times. That's not the way of attracting Republican votes that they need to get this thing through the House.