WASHINGTON: A bill to overhaul the US immigration system would likely be completed by the end of this week, two senior US senators said yesterday.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said that senators in the bipartisan “Group of Eight” have resolved all major issues in a pending deal and that their staff is putting the bill into legislative language.
“All of us have said that they’ll be no deal until the eight of us agree to a big, specific bill, but hopefully we can get that done by the end of the week,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme.
“There have been kerfuffles along the way, but each one of those thus far has been settled,” said Schumer, a member of the group, which has four Democrats and four Republicans.
All eight members must then review the legislative language, he said. The US Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO, the largest labour federation, reached an elusive agreement on a guest-worker programme late last month, clearing the way for the writing of a full bill. The legislation will include an earned pathway to US citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. REUTERS
