A bipartisan group in the House working on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws reached a deal in principle Thursday evening, aides said. The group plans to introduce its bill in June.
Details of the compromise were not released, but, much like a bill introduced in the Senate, the House legislation will include a path to legalization for the 11 million undocumented workers already in the country, as well as increased border security measures. The House version, though, is expected to be more conservative in its approach to granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, among a number of central issues.
It will most likely include a 15-year path to citizenship, rather than the 13-year path offered in the Senate proposal, as well as requiring illegal immigrants to sign an admission that they had violated United States immigration laws, aides said.
The House group had been meeting and working on a nearly parallel track with a similar bipartisan group in the Senate, which has already introduced legislation that is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But until Thursday, the House group had yet to reach an agreement, and earlier this week the Republican members had threatened to walk away and introduce legislation of their own if a compromise could not be reached.
The two-hour meeting Thursday evening, a last-ditch effort to save the legislation, finally produced the agreement in principle.