US: US legislators have voted to criminalise all illegal immigrants in the country and abolish the visa lottery that issues 50,000 green cards every year.
The bill passed by the House of Representatives late on Friday night is harsher than expected and does not include any mechanism for illegal immigrants now in the US to win the right to live in the country.
If it becomes law, the bill will affect tens of thousands of undocumented Irish immigrants in the US, whose plight the Government has made a priority in its relations with Washington.
It requires all employers to use a national database to verify that their employees are legal immigrants, imposing a $25,000 fine on businesses that fail to do so.
It would withhold federal money from state and local governments that forbid police asking people about their immigration status. State and local governments and police forces have long opposed such proposals, fearing that illegal immigrants will avoid reporting crimes if they believe they might be arrested for being in the country.
Anti-immigration campaigners welcomed the bill, which incorporated amendments proposed by Republican hard-liners, including a proposal to build a fortified wall along much of the US border with Mexico. "For the first time in 7½ years, I'm going to be able to go out on the stump and talk about my party doing the right thing on immigration. And I feel good about it," said Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo, leader of the conservative House Immigration Reform Caucus.
The White House asked Republicans to reduce the proposed penalty for being in the US illegally from a year and a day's detention to six months because the higher penalty would give the crimes felony status, requiring indictments and jury trials.
But most Democrats did not want to vote for any criminal penalty for living in the country illegally, which is now only a civil offence, and they joined 65 Republicans in voting down an amendment to reduce the penalty.
The Senate will discuss immigration reform in the New Year and is expected to produce a bill that includes a temporary worker programme that would allow immigrants to work legally in the US for up to six years. One bill, proposed by Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain, would allow most of those now in the US illegally to join the temporary worker programme and to get on to a path to US citizenship.
Another bill would demand that all illegal immigrants return home for a year before joining the temporary worker scheme and leave the US again after six years.
President Bush, who favours a temporary worker programme, welcomed the House Bill as a step towards improving border security. "America is a nation built on the rule of law, and this bill will help us protect our borders and crack down on illegal entry into the US. Securing our borders is essential to securing the homeland. I urge the Senate to take action on immigration reform so that I can sign a good bill into law," he said.
Any immigration bill that eventually becomes law is likely to be a compromise between the hardline approach taken by the House and a more liberal proposal from the Senate. An estimated 11 million people, most of them Mexicans, live in the US illegally and business groups warn that deporting them would damage the economy by depriving companies of a necessary part of the labour force.
Most want border security tightened, however, and Republican congressmen are under intense pressure to take tough action against illegal immigrants, whom many blame for overcrowded schools and hospitals.