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As they continue to flog a Senate-passed immigration bill in field hearings across the country, House Republicans are still holding out hope that Congress can clear a more limited border security measure this fall.

This week, House GOP members held field hearings to showcase their bill that would authorize money for additional fencing along with Mexican border, streamline deportation proceedings and force employers to verify the legality of their workers. While making their pitch, they also have been slamming a less-punitive Senate measure that would allow most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country while seeking permanent citizenship.

During a Monday hearing in Gainesville, Ga., Reps. Tom Price and Charlie Norwood, both Peach State Republicans, attacked the Senate bill with Price noting that it would create an environment "depressing domestic wages and welcoming illegal aliens across our borders."

While House Republicans view their get-tough bill as a way to rally the base in a daunting election year, GOP leaders also will make some attempt to mollify the White House and the business community, both of which would like to see some sort of guestworker program for illegal immigrants.

Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., noted the tightrope he walks in an interview published Thursday in his hometown paper, the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill. "To come together with a border control bill like we have and a Senate bill that's inherently flawed, and try to make law out of the two of them, you're going to have some problems. What we need is to take a fresh look at this," said Hastert, who added that House leaders might incorporate findings from their field hearings in future legislation.

After a Thursday hearing in El Paso, Texas, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., was uncertain about prospects for a compromise.

"In order to reach a compromise with a Senate, there are going to have to be some things that both houses give up that a lot of people very strongly support. I don't know if it can be done. I don't know if a compromise can be reached," he said.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., chairman of the conservative Republican Study Group, plans to visit San Diego and El Paso next week for a fact-finding mission as well as an attempt to promote his proposal to allow most illegal immigrants to stay and work in the United States but only after the government secures the country's borders. The Pence proposal would force illegal immigrants to at least briefly depart the country.

COMMENTS

• There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant! They are criminals no matter how you slice it. Perhaps if we stopped framing the debate as one of immigration, but rather as criminal acts, it might be easier to get the message through to Congress that this dog won't hunt. GovExec.com reader Posted August 22, 2006 11:02 AM
• Compromise with amnesty? What insanity is this? Doesn't the public understand that Republican senators along with Democrats passed the Senate bill? Bush and his cronies are advocating the continued economic slavery of millions of illegal immigrants because it's good for business. Sounds like the antebellum South has risen again! Since illegal immigrants only make up about 5 percent of the work market, let's deport them, prosecute the businesses employing them, seize their assets using the RICO statutes, and give the jobs to poor Americans who can't get a job. What's wrong with that? GovExec.com reader Posted August 21, 2006 6:35 AM