Supporters of immigration reform look to Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah for needed Republican support as the markup of the Senate bill continues. Gaining that support may mean making compromises with Senator Hatch on issues of finance and H-1B visas.

By Ashley Parker, The New York Times, May 20, 2013

As proponents of a new immigration overhaul cast about for a Republican ally to help give their bill an extra boost, they have focused on a 79-year-old lawmaker with new hipster glasses (from Costco), black Nike sneakers (for his bad arches) and, perhaps most important, a deep and complicated relationship with immigration policy: Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.

Members of the bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws see Mr. Hatch as a potentially influential partner. He was an original co-sponsor of the Dream Act for younger immigrants and has shown a willingness to embrace other immigration legislation as well. Though he ran to the right during a primary challenge in the 2012 election, they believe he might be brought back into the fold now that he is safely ensconced in his seventh Senate term.

“Senator Hatch is somebody who understands these issues well, has a long history, and it would very valuable to have him support our bill, both in committee and on the floor,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the bipartisan group, who also sits on the Judiciary Committee with Mr. Hatch.

In an effort to increase Mr. Hatch’s investment in the legislation, Mr. Schumer and other members of the bipartisan group on Monday threw their support behind a Hatch initiative to begin collecting biometric information like fingerprints at airports to register immigrants when they leave the country.

With the exception of two Republican members of the bipartisan group who also sit on the Judiciary Committee — Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — Mr. Hatch is considered the other Republican member most likely to support the bill, which would give it some conservative gravitas as it heads to the Senate floor.

The bipartisan group is hoping for a large Senate vote in support of the bill — some members have suggested as many as 70 votes — to place pressure on House Republicans to also get behind the legislation. And Mr. Hatch’s “yes” vote is seen as a driver for what they hope will be a groundswell of support. Mr. Hatch, who hails from a state with a dynamic immigration culture, meanwhile finds himself with a final chance to help pass a broad immigration overhaul, something in which he has both publicly and privately expressed a genuine interest.

But Mr. Hatch’s “yes” vote in committee comes with a major caveat — the acceptance of provisions of his that would, among other things, help technology companies by increasing the number of temporary visas available for high-skilled workers (known as H-1B visas) and ease restrictions around the hiring and firing of workers. He also is offering some provisions on the finance side, including one that would require immigrants to show they have paid back taxes and are staying current with them as they proceed toward legal status.

“I personally believe we need immigration reform,” said Mr. Hatch, adding that his tweaks to the bill are “amendments that clean it up and make it a better bill, and may even be able to get it more votes.” The provisions are also, he explained, an all-but-ironclad requirement for earning his vote: “They know my point is I’ve got to have those,” he said, referring to the message he has communicated to the group.

And so last week, as the committee met twice to discuss the bill publicly, the behind-the-scenes negotiating and arm-twisting picked up in earnest, with Mr. Schumer’s office taking the lead in trying to work out an agreement with Mr. Hatch.

“He’s made it clear that having his support will be dependent on the committee accepting his proposals to improve the bill,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, one of the Republican authors. “We think accepting his improvements and having his support is critical to getting the broad Republican support we want.”

A particular source of tension is Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and another member of the bipartisan group, who opposes many of Mr. Hatch’s amendments because he thinks they would hurt American workers.

“Some of them are absolutely unacceptable,” Mr. Durbin said. “What he wants to do is make it easier for firms seeking H-1B visas not to hire Americans.”

Still, Mr. Durbin acknowledged the delicate political realities: “We want all the support we can get, but if the price of support of any Republican member is for us to turn this carefully crafted, politically balanced deal on its head, it’s not worth it.”

If Mr. Hatch succeeds in getting what he wants, it would be a coup both for the senator and the technology industry. Mr. Hatch can fall back on the high-tech community to strengthen his hand, as he did in a committee meeting last week when he warned, “There’s a whole tech world that’s getting up in arms if we don’t do this right, and they alone can make this bill very difficult to pass.” And the tech industry will have found a strong advocate in Mr. Hatch to further push their cause in Congress.

By late Monday night, Senate aides said, Mr. Hatch was closing in on a deal with the bipartisan group, and was expected to offer his high-tech amendments on Tuesday.

“Senator Hatch has a long history of leadership on high-tech issues,” said Dan Turrentine, the vice president of government relations and business development at TechNet, a trade group that advocates for a range of Silicon Valley companies. “His interest in immigration and efforts to ensure the workability of well-intentioned high-skilled reforms proposed by the Gang of Eight makes him a natural to be at the center of negotiations as he seeks to strengthen the bill and broaden support.”

Utah has been nicknamed the “Silicon Slopes” for the more than 5,000 high-tech companies that populate the state, and in some ways, Utah itself is as diverse on the topic of immigration as its two senators. In contrast to Mr. Hatch, Senator Mike Lee, a Republican who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, has advocated breaking up the legislation into smaller pieces and does not necessarily support a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country.

In 2010, the state’s business, political, religious and law-enforcement leaders got behind the Utah Compact, a document intended to offer an open-minded and holistic approach to immigration. The Mormon Church, of which Mr. Hatch is a member, also endorsed the compact and has offered a similarly broad view toward immigration.

In addition to being one of the original co-sponsors of the Dream Act, a bill that surfaced more than a decade ago and would create a formal path to citizenship for young people brought to the United States illegally as children, Mr. Hatch has worked on other components of the immigration debate. He helped draft the agricultural workers program that is part of the Senate bill.

Though he backed away from immigration reform when he faced a tough primary challenge in 2012, many immigration advocates believe he is now ready to come around to their side.

“I think there is the political space now for Senator Hatch to talk about these issues that he has a track record of being supportive of,” said Ben Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Council.

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Claiming that security requirements were insufficient for adequately checking the backgrounds of millions of immigrants, the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council urged lawmakers to reject the proposed Senate immigration bill on Monday. The Obama administration and Department of Homeland Security argue otherwise and continue to support the Senate bill.

By Julia Preston, The New York Times, May 21, 2013

Department of Homeland Security officials, responding to sharp criticism on Monday from a union representing 12,000 of its employees, said they had added many safeguards in recent years to protect against fraud and security violations by foreigners seeking to live in the United States.

The officials reacted swiftly to a statement by Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, in which he called on lawmakers to reject an immigration bill before the Senate, saying security procedures were weak for checking the backgrounds of millions of immigrants who would apply for immigration documents under the legislation.

Mr. Palinkas said he was adding his signature to a letter to Congress from a separate union that represents 7,700 federal deportation agents, which charged that the Senate bill would be a “significant barrier to the creation of a safe and lawful system of immigration.”

If the legislation passes, the immigration officers in Mr. Palinkas’s union will be central to carrying it out. They would review applications for provisional legal status from an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, as well as for millions of green cards and other immigration documents.

Administration officials rallied on Monday to dispute any contention that they had been lax on immigration security, and also to fend off any new opposition arising to the Senate bill, which President Obama strongly supports.

In his statement, Mr. Palinkas said immigration officers had been rushed into approving applications, with officials discouraging them from “proper investigation into red flags.”

The citizenship agency “has been turned into an approval machine,” Mr. Palinkas said.

He said a program started last year by Mr. Obama to give deportation reprieves to young undocumented immigrants had an approval rate of 99.5 percent. “Practices were put in place to stop proper screening and enforcement,” he said.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Palinkas said many agency employees felt they had been slighted by top officials, who paid more attention to the demands of immigrant advocate organizations.

“There is a sense of entitlement among the interest groups,” Mr. Palinkas said. “They expect to get what they seek.”

Homeland Security officials said that accusations of a “rush to yes” by the employees of the citizenship agency long predated the Obama administration. The agency created an antifraud unit in 2010 to increase the number and scope of reviews of immigrants applying for documents, the officials said, with the number of antifraud officers increasing by 20 percent since then. The agency greatly expanded requirements for screenings based on fingerprints and other biometric information, the officials said.

Rather than press for more approvals, the agency has scrutinized employees’ decisions to make sure they were consistent with the law, officials said, and set priorities allowing officers to focus on detecting immigrants who might be security threats.

Approval rates were high in the youth program, officials argued, because many young undocumented immigrants who were not likely to qualify either did not come forward to apply or withdrew when their applications were questioned by the agency.

“Reverting back to a system that treats violent criminals the same as children brought to this country through no fault of their own would only undermine the integrity of the immigration system and force law enforcement agencies to divert limited resources from focusing on those who pose real threats to their communities,” said Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

The bill by a bipartisan group of eight senators is moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers on Monday continued voting on some 300 amendments. So far, opponents have gained little traction, although the committee has adopted several amendments, mainly by Republicans, to strengthen security provisions.

The letters from the immigration officers’ unions was quickly circulated by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican who staunchly opposes the bill.

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Despite declining apprehension rates in recent years, the numbers of migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border have remained high. As border security has increased, migrants have sought more dangerous paths to cross the border, with more fatal results. The difficulty of identifying the bodies found points to the complexity of the immigration issue.

By Fernanda Santos and Rebekah Zemansky, The New York Times, May 20, 2013

In the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office here — repository of the nation’s largest collection of missing-person reports for immigrants who have vanished while crossing the United States-Mexico border — 774 sets of remains awaited identification in mid-May, stored in musty body bags coated in dust.

For the family of Andrés Valenzuela Cota, the remains represent a chance to turn the page on a sad chapter of family history. Mr. Cota was 45 when he disappeared on July 15, 2011, after calling a niece in Los Angeles and asking her to send $100 to a Western Union office in Cananea, Mexico, a staging point for smugglers bringing migrants through Arizona.

As Congress debates the most sweeping changes to the country’s immigration system in decades, the remains stored here are also a nagging reminder of the complicated variables of the border-security equation. The number of migrant apprehensions declined precipitously in recent years, one of the strongest indicators that fewer people have tried to cross the border illegally. But the number of migrant deaths has remained high.

“Less people are coming across,” said Bruce Anderson, the chief forensic anthropologist at the medical examiner’s office, “but a greater fraction of them are dying.”

There were 463 deaths in the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30 — the equivalent of about five migrants dying every four days, according to an analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. In the time federal statistics have been compiled, only 2005 had more deaths, and in that year, there were more than three times as many apprehensions.

As security at the border has tightened, pushing migrants to seek more remote and dangerous routes, the largest number of the deaths last year occurred along the punishing stretch of desert that spans the southernmost tip of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, the busiest along the border.

The only riskier stretch is the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas, where, from Oct. 1 to April 30, law enforcement officers or ranchers found the bodies of 77 immigrants, or more than half the number of bodies recovered there in all of the past fiscal year: 150.

In that sector, the most deaths have occurred in Brooks County, small and struggling at 944 square miles, where the average household income is $25,000. The number of migrant remains recovered is on pace to double that of last year, a record for the county, at 129, said a county judge, Raul Ramirez. Most of the dead are believed to be from Central America, Judge Ramirez said.

In Tucson, the medical examiner’s office, which handles autopsies for the border counties in the Tucson sector — three of Arizona’s four border counties — received 49 sets of remains from Jan. 1 to May 9, Dr. Anderson said. Each was assigned a number, then photographed, cataloged, weighed and measured. Clothes, tattered by the elements and wildlife, were placed in plastic bags.

For years, identification of the remains was elusive because there were so few clues. Few immigrants from impoverished rural communities could be traced with dental records. ID cards, found in pockets and backpacks, were unreliable because many were forgeries, bought by Central Americans to elude the authorities in Mexico, which the migrants had to cross illegally before reaching the United States.

Assembling the remains, like linking a mandible that arrived in the office early this spring to a set of remains that was missing one, is like solving a grisly puzzle. It requires manually searching the color-coded paper case files lining the walls in Dr. Anderson’s office: one shelf for cases from the late 1990s, when there were few, and the rest for the more than 2,100 deaths since 2001.

“The cause and manner of death is easy: it’s either there or it’s undetermined,” said Dr. Gregory L. Hess, chief medical examiner in Pima County. “It’s what goes on in trying to identify the person that can take a long time.”

Early this month, the office unveiled a computerized mapping database bearing the records of 1,826 migrants who died in the desert, listing GPS coordinates for where they were found and, if known, their sex, age and cause of death. It gives the public the first comprehensive glimpse of the complexity of the problem. Combined, the hundreds of red dots that represent people who died of exposure to the intense desert heat and cold, by far the most common among the causes of death, look like an unshapely bruise.

The project began five years ago, through a partnership with Humane Borders, a nonprofit group that had already been plotting the deaths. An anonymous donor provided $175,000 to develop the database.

The lone mandible had been plucked from deep inside the desert near Three Points, west of Tucson. Angela Soler, a forensic anthropologist at the office, searched the database for bodies found in the same area. There were 52 in a six-mile radius.

Dr. Soler started by focusing on those that were closest. One was the complete body of a man found and identified in 2008. Another was found in 2012, an unidentified Hispanic man between 20 and 35, the most common demographic among dead migrants. She pulled the file and found that the body was missing a mandible. (DNA tests are under way to determine whether they are a match.)

“It took hours to do what might have taken months,” she said.

In March, the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office asked the family of Mr. Cota, the migrant who disappeared in 2011, for his dental records to see if he was among the unidentified dead stored there. There were seven possible matches among the bodies found in Cochise County, for which the office handles autopsies and where Mr. Cota is believed to have entered the country, based on what he told his relatives on his last phone call.

A brother-in-law, who asked not to be identified because he feared the drug cartels that control the human-smuggling business, said the family had filed missing-person reports on both sides of the border; visited local hospitals, police stations and prisons in Arizona; and retraced Mr. Cota’s route, posting fliers bearing his name and photograph in communities along the way.

“Every door we’re knocking is closed,” the brother-in-law said. “Nothing opens.”

Mr. Cota lived for 20 years in California, most of it illegally, overstaying a visa. When his mother became deathly ill, he left for Los Mochis, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, to say goodbye.

In September 2010, he tried to cross back through San Diego using a fake passport, but he was caught and imprisoned for 45 days. After his release, he tried twice to sneak across the border, without success. A relative eventually told him to go to a Mexican border city, Nogales, where a smuggler could bring him into Arizona “for a discounted rate,” his brother-in-law said.

On his last call, Mr. Cota said he was about to start his journey, but had to leave his cellphone behind. He promised to call again in six days.

On May 9, Robin C. Reineke, a cultural anthropologist at the medical examiner’s office, searched the database for a match, going through the cases from Cochise County one by one.

Mr. Cota was not among them. The search goes on.

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The House’s own bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has announced that it reached an “agreement in principle” on immigration reform legislation. Authors say it differs in several areas from the proposed Senate bill, but the details have yet to be unveiled.

By Dierdre Walsh, CNN, May 16, 2013

After months of intense negotiations, a bipartisan U.S. House group has reached an “agreement in principle” on immigration reform, according to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, one of the GOP members of the group.

A Democratic aide familiar with the discussions confirmed that all the members signed on and told CNN both Democrats and Republicans “will now run the whole package past their respective leadership and colleagues” and aim to formally introduce legislation at the beginning of June.

Diaz-Balart declined to get into the details of the deal, but said, “there’s going to be a lot of differences in a lot of areas,” from a bipartisan measure working its way through the Senate.

“Filing a real bipartisan bill – a serious, enforceable commonsense bill is, I think, a huge step. But it’s the first step of the process … a very important step,” Diaz-Balart told reporters outside the House floor Thursday.

The four Republican members of the House group include Diaz-Balart, Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho, and Rep. John Carter and Rep. Sam Johnson, both of Texas.

The four Democrats are Reps. Xavier Becerra and Zoe Lofgren, both of California, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, and Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky.

Carter told reporters earlier on Thursday that the last sticking point involved whether the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States would get access to government health care benefits. It’s unclear how the group resolved that issue.

Carter also said that because Republican and Democratic negotiators were unable to come to an agreement on a program overseeing guest workers, the group decided to leave that issue out of the bill. But both planned to offer their proposals separately, likely as amendments to the main legislation.

Both sides differed on how many worker visas should be allowed for construction companies and other industries relying on low skilled labor workers.

House Speaker John Boehner pledged that any immigration bill would move through the appropriate committees in the House before any vote by the full chamber.

A key test for the bipartisan deal will come when the House Judiciary Committee takes it up, because that panel includes a significant number of conservatives, who have pledged to block any measure that allows a path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

Boehner signaled he wanted the House to have its own version to negotiate a final immigration bill with the Democratic-led Senate.

“I continue to believe that the House needs to deal with this and the House needs to work its will,” Boehner said on Thursday.

The Senate plan is now being considered by the Judiciary Committee.

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The immigration reform debate has included much discussion on work-based visa requirements and an E-Verify program that will allow necessary labor into the country while preserving US citizen jobs. When surveyed, the majority of American small businesses favor immigration reform and an E-Verify program that does not affect their bottom line.

By Tim Gallen, Pheonix Business Journal, May 17, 2013

A vast majority of U.S. small businesses believe immigration reform is vital to their businesses, according to a survey from the National Association for the Self-Employed.

The NASE survey found that 77 percent of the nation’s small companies called the issue of immigration reform important to their business.

America’s small businesses want comprehensive immigration reform that includes a stronger electronic verify system, according to the NASE.

“America’s smallest businesses are not only ready and willing to comply with an E-Verify requirement, but want a process that works at verifying if an employee can work legally in this country,” said NASE Director of Government Affairs Katie Vlietstra.

Small businesses want to comply with immigration regulations so long as they do not impact their bottom lines.

As part of the survey, 79 percent of respondents said they would not pay to outsource employment verification on new hires’ immigration status if it became mandatory. Also, 58.8 percent said employers who had full- or part-time employees should comply with an employment verification system.

NASE conducted a survey of its membership between February 25 – March 18, showing that America’s smallest businesses – the self-employed and micro-businesses (with ten or fewer employees) – find the issue of immigration reform important, want Congress to develop a balanced solution and are willing to comply with new reform regulations.

“We must work toward a fair, balanced and sensible approach to modernizing our immigration system,” said Vlietstra. “This must include simple and effective verification systems for small business owners to comply by verifying the legality of any potential employee to work in this country. Small businesses are willing to comply, but must have an efficient and effective process of doing so.”

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By Erica Werner, Associated Press, May 20, 2013     

The Senate Judiciary Committee is aiming this week to pass a landmark immigration bill to secure the border and offer citizenship to millions, setting up a high-stakes debate on the Senate floor.

First, the committee must resolve a few remaining disputes.

One involves amendments over high-skilled immigrant visas sought by the high-tech industry but opposed by labor unions. The bill as written increases the availability of these visas, but includes restrictions aimed at ensuring U.S. workers get the first crack at jobs. Silicon Valley companies view some of the restrictions as too onerous and are lobbying to soften them.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, seen as a swing vote on the committee, is on the side of the high-tech industry, while Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is championing the labor position. Lawmakers and lobbyists have been trying to find a compromise that could win Hatch’s support for the overall bill without alienating Durbin, one of its authors.

There’s also a disagreement over whether gay Americans should be given the right to sponsor their foreign-born spouses for green cards like straight Americans can. Gay rights groups are pressuring Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to offer an amendment allowing this, but Republican authors of the immigration bill insist that they’ll abandon their support for their legislation if such a measure is included.

Both disputes were put off until last week as lawmakers negotiated behind the scenes and weighed their options. The three public work sessions the Judiciary Committee held over the last two weeks featured little suspense, as committee members waded through some of the 300 amendments that were filed to the bipartisan bill. The legislation seeks to dramatically remake the U.S. immigration system and allow tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country.

Committee members accepted a number of Republican-sought changes to the bill, including provisions tightening up border security. But majority Democrats and the two Republican committee members who helped write the legislation — Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — fended off major changes, branded “poison pills,” that could jeopardize the delicate compromises at its core.

This week, in addition to the high-tech and gay marriage disputes, amendments will focus on the crucial sections of the bill dealing with the 13-year path to citizenship the legislation offers the 11 million people in this country who are here illegally.

Democrats have the votes to ensure committee passage of the legislation by the end of the week, before Congress breaks for its Memorial Day recess. The outcome is less certain on the Senate floor, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has promised the measure will be considered in June. Less certain still is the outcome in the GOP-controlled House, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has not said publicly how or when he’ll proceed with bringing immigration legislation to a vote.

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First-time crossers face criminal misdemeanor charges, punishable with up to 180 days in prison; repeat offenders face felony charges and longer sentences.

Tucked in the current Senate bill, the provision calls for the U.S. District Court in Arizona to bolster the program. If enacted, the bill would increase the number of individuals who face prosecution for sneaking into the U.S. along a 262-mile rugged desert swath of Mexico’s border with Arizona—from the current 70 a day to 210. The bill would allocate $250 million over five years to the Tucson U.S. Attorney’s Office, additional magistrate judges, the public defender’s office and the marshal’s office to achieve that goal.

“Operation Streamline is the most effective deterrent program DHS runs, so it’s an important element of the border security provisions in the bill,” said Brian Rogers, spokesman for Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), who is in the bipartisan group that drafted the bill.

U.S. Border Patrol officials say the program has discouraged potential migrants from attempting illegal crossings. In seeking congressional support for Streamline in 2012, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, “the deterrent effect…has had pronounced results on the number of aliens attempting illegal entry/re-entry.”

Critics say Streamline is expensive, diverts limited resources from core law enforcement priorities, strains U.S. courts and prisons, and undermines the due process of immigrants. They say it creates criminals by prosecution.

Although Streamline covers much of the Southwest border, the bill doesn’t call for bolstering it in other heavily trafficked border regions, such as the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Representatives for Mr. McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who also helped write the bill, said the senators wouldn’t oppose expanding the program elsewhere.

Streamline has already overwhelmed many border courts in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The bill doesn’t address the backlog of criminal cases in the District Court of Arizona, where the chief judge declared a judicial emergency in 2011 to secure more time to tackle the caseload.

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Immigration reform supporters have a new ally — the environmental lobby. The Sierra Club’s board voted Wednesday to support comprehensive immigration reform, POLITICO has learned. The backing from the nation’s oldest environmental group is a major shift that could help immigration reform supporters gain momentum as they try to push the measure through the Senate. It is another sign that some of the historical opponents to overhauling the country’s immigration laws, like evangelicals, are switching sides in this controversial debate.

The powerful grass-roots group’s decision is expected to have an emphasis on keeping families together and frames the debate from the standpoint that undocumented workers are the most adversely affected by pollution, a source familiar with the Sierra Club plans confirmed.

The source added that the endorsement is expected to be made public Thursday morning.

A spokeswoman for the group did not respond immediately for an email request for comment.

The decision is a major shift for the group, which has a storied past over the issue.

Sierra Club leaders in the mid-2000s fought off an insurgent effort trying to have the club take an explicitly anti-immigration stance, with some members claiming it was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles. The effort fell apart after a pitched battle.

Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Michael Brune, the club’s executive director, has taken the 121-year-old environmental group in new directions on other fronts too. Brune, who built his own insurgent reputation atop the Rainforest Action Network, got arrested during a Keystone XL pipeline protest outside the White House in February alongside actress Daryl Hannah, environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr., and civil rights leader Julian Bond. The arrest came after the Sierra Club had suspended a decades-long policy against club-sanctioned civil disobedience.

Both Schumer and McCain believe it is essential to attract more than just a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority. Members of the “Gang” maintain that building a strong majority of 70 votes is not only possible; but that it’s necessary to cajole the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to act.

Achieving that massive majority would require building a broad base of support, beyond just a handful of Republicans. McCain said that a large coalition of business, labor, agricultural, and religious groups support the “Gang of Eight” plan, showing that it’s doable to attract 70 votes.

Schumer and McCain remain very bullish about the chances of pushing the immigration overhaul through Congress despite last week’s Boston Marathon bombing, which prompted some GOP lawmakers to call for delaying the bill.

Schumer said that the bill would have actually strengthened security measures that could have enabled law enforcement to better monitor the movements of one of the bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who traveled to Russia in January 2012 despite being included on a U.S. terror watch list.

“The events of Boston, if anything, should importune us to leave the status quo and go to a proposal like ours,” he said.

Nonetheless, McCain said that he would be open to amendments that would address security concerns related to Boston, although he said it’s too early to say what those changes might be.

“We will have ample opportunity, if there are lessons to be learned about the Boston tragedy, to incorporate [them] into the legislation,” said the Arizona Republican. “This is not the final product.”

McCain said that the group of eight senators has had conversations with a similar group in the House, which is drafting its own immigration bill.

The House is expected to turn out a more conservative product than the Senate. But both Schumer and McCain cautioned the House group that the Senate would under no circumstances accept a bill that does not include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“There’s no way of getting this job done without giving people a path to citizenship,” said McCain. “A legal status is not something that someone should have to remain in unless they want to. It offends our fundamental principles of fairness in our society,” to prevent people from gaining citizenship.

Schumer said that a bill without a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would be a “non-starter” in the Senate and would not garner a single Democratic vote.

“If they don’t provide a path to citizenship, their bill is a non-starter,” Schumer told Univision after the breakfast. “There will be no immigration reform.”

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Convening the Senate Judiciary Committee for its second hearing on immigration reform, committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT., on Monday urged his Senate colleagues to stop using the Boston Marathon bombings as an excuse to slow down immigration reform.

“Last week opponents of comprehensive immigration reform began to exploit the Boston Marathon,” he said at the beginning of the hearing. “I urge restraint in that regard.”

The bombing suspects, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were Chechen immigrants. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old taken into custody on Friday, came to the United States in 2002 with his father and applied for political asylum. He gained lawful resident status in February 2007 and became a U.S. citizen on Sept. 11, 2012. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police last week, had applied for citizenship status but his application was delayed.

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