If they want to apply legally more power to them.
"You earn your way to get here by applying legally and coming legally," Mr. Gramm said.
Then, formerly illegal immigrants could apply for merit-based green cards, along with many other foreigners applying legally.
They include those who had applied legally for green cards and had been stuck in backlogs for 10 years or more.
The document was released one day after President Bush announced that his administration was looking into ways to ensure that the term "marriage" would apply legally only to unions between men and women.
Under E.U. regulations, if they were already registered and fingerprinted in another country, they may be unable to receive asylum benefits in Germany at all, and unable to apply legally for work, as well.
It is not right for an immigrant to break the law to gain advantage over those who apply legally or for an employer to do so in pursuit of a business advantage.
The sweeping Senate bill would offer legal status and eventually citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, tighten border security, and speed visa reviews for more than four million immigrants who have applied legally and are waiting in backlogs.
Grown-ups who came here by sneaking across the border or overstaying a temporary visa will have to register, submit to a background check, pay taxes and penalties, and then wait their turn behind those who applied legally.
Advocates say the Senate's path — which requires illegal immigrants to pay fines and back taxes, study English, pass criminal checks and wait in line behind foreigners who applied legally — is sufficiently long and arduous.
The group has agreed on a 13-year path to citizenship (10 years for a green card, and 3 more for naturalization), a series of border security requirements, a mandatory electronic employment verification program, a new merit-based program for foreign workers to become legal permanent residents and a plan to clear the backlogs of those immigrants who have applied legally for green cards.
