Washington, March 29 (IANS) President Barack Obama is confident that immigration reform to resolve the problem of 11 million illegal immigrants, including some 260,000 Indians, is coming soon.
A group of lawmakers are close to working out the details of their proposal, he said in interviews Wednesday with two of America’s largest Spanish-language broadcast television networks, Telemundo and Univision.
“I’m actually very optimistic that when they return in early April we will see a bill ready to move through the process,” he was quoted by CNN as telling Telemundo.
“The most important thing is that we are seeing a strong compromise to resolve the problem,” he said. “I’ve got my own legislation, I’m prepared to step in, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
In another interview, Obama told Univision: “My sense is that they are close,”. “My expectation is we’ll see a bill on the floor of the Senate next month.”
If a bill is introduced next month, Obama told Telemundo he was “confident we can get it done certainly before the end of the summer.”
CNN citing a source familiar with the immigration reform proposal negotiations reported last week that a bipartisan group of eight senators had tentatively agreed to some of the stickiest issues, like a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and metrics for securing the border.
But there was a key issue before the “gang of eight” – four Democrats and four Republicans-that had yet to be resolved: how to construct a guest worker programme for the future.
The senators were haggling over details like how much low-skilled guest workers would be paid, and how many workers would be allowed into the country each year, the source was quoted as saying by the news channel.
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