Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - A debate over immigration reform began anew in the Senate yesterday with several senators citing the unabated flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico as a national security concern.
The federal government needs to identify the more than 10 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States, as well as slow the flow of illegal immigration, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said at a Senate hearing.

"This is an issue of national security," said McCain, who introduced a sweeping immigration reform bill in May. "Literally, in the Southwest and now across the nation, this issue is affecting everything: health-care costs, law enforcement costs."

McCain's bill, co-written with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is one of several Senate proposals aimed at curtailing the influx of illegal immigrants who mainly come across the Mexican border.

Yesterday's hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee originally was scheduled to address a bill by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to promote cooperation with Canada and Mexico over border-security issues.

But it turned into an early round of a major immigration debate over how to curb illegal immigration. The U.S. Border Patrol reported apprehending more than 1.1 million people last year trying to cross the Mexican border.

The McCain-Kennedy bill would increase the number of guest-worker visas, allow illegal residents to apply for legal status and require more cooperation between the United States and Mexico to slow the flow of illegal immigrants. Merely enforcing existing laws will not solve the problem, Kennedy said.

"We haven't got enough fence, and we haven't got enough troops," he said. "In the last 10 years, we have spent more than $20 billion to enforce our immigration laws."