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US lawmakers battle over immigration efforts

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Two US senators who will oversee their party's efforts on US immigration have called for strict law enforcement as part of any temporary-worker program. Competing senators have put forward a different plan for the country's immigration policy.

Two weeks ago, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a broad overhaul of immigration that called for a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, a 400,000-person-per-year increase in immigration and for the federal government to produce a plan to secure the border.

It also called for Mexico to secure its own borders to try to prevent the flow of illegal aliens across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, along with Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, will put forward a competing immigration overhaul some time this summer. The Kyl-Cornyn bill will propose hiring 10,000 Department of Homeland Security employees to do work-site investigations over the next five years, and another 5,000 to detect fraud in immigration-benefits adjudication. It also spends $5 billion over five years, half for technology and half on infrastructure, to "achieve operational control of the borders of the United States."