Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

WASHINGTON --- Proposals to legalize some of America's 9 million illegal immigrants are making a political comeback after being sidelined for nearly a year by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt announced this week that fellow Democrats soon will unveil sweeping legislation to allow millions of foreigners who have been in the United States at least five years to ''earn'' legal permanent residence.

The bill would be a switch in direction after national security concerns focused attention on lax border and immigration policies.

The proposal is given little hope of passage in the Republican-controlled House, where critics have been assailing it as election-year pandering to Hispanics. Gephardt made his announcement before a meeting of the Council of La Raza, one of the leading Latino activist groups.

Even so, Democrats are not alone in their outreach to potential new voting groups. Some Republicans have been renewing their overtures, especially to Hispanics, as the White House continues to prepare its own legalization plan.

''There is some movement,'' said Megan Riding, spokeswoman for Rep. Christopher Cannon (R-Utah), who has been a point man on Capitol Hill for the Bush administration's own legalization efforts. Cannon has joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in seeking legal status and in-state tuition rates for graduating high school students who are illegal immigrants.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration still is in talks with Mexico over how to set a ''more orderly, humane and safe'' migration policy.

''A temporary guest-worker program remains under consideration,'' McClellan said and added that the president wants to include a path to legal residency.

''It appears that there's a bidding war going on between the two parties,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. ''Nobody wants to alienate potential Hispanic voters.''

Despite the discussions, prospects for action this year appear doubtful.

''There's nothing that's going to happen this year on immigration,'' said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the most outspoken congressional critic of illegal immigration.

Yet, this week the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would allow some illegal immigrants with felony convictions to avoid deportation and let others, who have already been deported, return to the United States.

Annual deportations doubled in 2000 to 69,000 after the laws were tightened in 1996, Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) told his committee Tuesday. Sensenbrenner joined with liberal Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts in drafting a bill to permit more flexibility.

''A disturbing number of cases have arisen where permanent resident aliens have been deported for offenses which many feel do not merit such a penalty,'' Sensenbrenner said.

He failed to win over many fellow Republicans. Rep. Lamar Smith, of Texas, called it ''unprecedented'' to let convicted and deported felons return and dismissed the hardship cases as rare exceptions.

''If you invited a guest to your home and that guest stole your jewelry or used your child in pornography or gave drugs to your teenager, you would ask them to leave,'' Smith said in a statement released by his office. ''That's what we should continue to do with criminal aliens who have been convicted of serious crimes.''

The Sensenbrenner-Frank bill passed 18-15. But with only five Republicans behind it, the Republican leadership is unlikely to bring it to a floor vote.