On Thursday, the American Action Forum, will release a letter, which is the latest attempt from conservative economists, who have seen a division in their ranks on the overhaul immigration that is currently in the Senate.

The AAF economists wrote in their letter that the positive impact of immigration reform would be seen through labor force growth, population growth, housing growth and in other markets, which would lead to the country’s economic growth picking up. This, wrote the economists, will in turn be positive for the federal budget.

The total signing the letter was 111. The economists mentioned the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, in noting that the immigration legislation could increase the economic growth over the next 10 years by 0.1% and lower the government deficit by some $300 billion.

The Senate’s legislation, which would be the biggest change of immigration law in the U.S. in over a generation, has divided the Republican Party.

Some GOP members agree with the proposed pathway to citizenship in the bill for the nearly 11 million people currently living inside the U.S. without proper legal status.

However, others want the focus to be on enforcement. Opponents to the legislation say the reform will just draw additional immigrants into the country illegally.

The Heritage Foundation, which is conservative, released a detailed report earlier this month suggesting that immigrants would cost taxpayers over $6.3 trillion more than what they would pay through taxes during their lifetimes.

The organization the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council is led by its president Kenneth Palinkas. He said the union never was approached by the bipartisan lawmakers who crafted the sweeping immigration reforms that are now being considered by Congress.

Palinkas claims the lawmakers drafted the legislation with special interests’ in mind and does not address many of the most serious immigration concerns the USCIS Council currently has about the system.

The union members are officers from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is responsible for processing different visas and other paperwork regarding immigration.

The union leader said the legislation does not address pressures he claims are placed upon the adjudication officers to rubber stamp the application rather than conducting case reviews for each. He also said more had to be done to address the overstays on student visas.

Earlier in May, the National ICE Council, a union representing over 7,000 agents sent Congress a letter criticizing the new proposed immigration reform legislation saying they would not support it. Three major unions represent the immigration agents and officers in the country.

President Obama remains optimistic that the strategy in the Senate using the bipartisan approach is the best.

The Group of Eight Senators is scheduled to hit the floor in the Senate in June. In the House, a bipartisan group this week agreed on a large bill in principle that will be outlined for all sometime in June.

However, there are many major hurdles to pass before the final immigration reform reaches the desk of President Barack Obama. The biggest hurdle of them all is the House, which is controlled by the GOP.

At this point, the bill in the Senate has a zero chance of reaching the floor of the House. Senators key in the making of the Senate bill John McCain a Republican from Arizona and Chuck Schumer a Democrat from New York, both stressed their bill would have to have close to 70 votes in the Senate to put pressure on the House. However, GOP negotiators in the House have flatly said the vote in the Senate does not matter at all, regardless of what the margin is.

Republican Rep. John Carter from Texas said he does not think the legislation will pass in the House. He said he thought the bill the House was finalizing would have a better chance of being approved in the House, than the Senate legislation would. He called the Senate bill too broad and full of holes.

The GOP says the path to citizenship in the Senate bill is too short, the guest worker program is too generous for labor unions and the security measures at the border are not strong enough.

In the report, three Council on Foreign Relations researchers also explained that the falloff in the amount of illegal immigration is just partly the result of border security being tougher.

However, two-thirds of the reason for the drop is due to economic changes taking place in both the U.S. and Mexico that have made the migration north for Mexicans less attractive than before.

The authors wrote it was surprising how little is known regarding the actual border security and how small an effort the current administration and Washington lawmakers have made in attempting to make the security stronger, especially at a time when the new immigration bill depends upon improved border security.

Regardless of the efforts of the Border Patrol, some immigrants are going to make it into the U.S. from Mexico unseen. However, the report shows that border security has increased in the past 10 years and the likelihood of some crossing illegally and being caught is between 50% and 60%, which is an increase from 2000, when it was between 30% and 45%.

The Senate’s Judiciary Committee started last week working through the immigration bill that is 867 pages in length. They already closed out the section on border security after making just minor changes.

The committee shot down the repeated efforts of Republicans to stiffen security measures at the border or to insist on the borders being secure prior to giving legal status to current undocumented immigrants.

Those two measures were defeated 12-6 with all 10 Democrats and 2 Republicans voting in opposition.

Following the bombings last week, in which there were three deaths and close to 300 injured, a small contingent of conservative senators, which includes Chuck Grassley the Republican senator from Iowa and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, have questioned if the Senate should proceed with a comprehensive reform for immigration since the alleged bombers had been born on foreign soil.

These new calls for further review threaten to stop the longstanding, delicate bipartisan negotiations for the overhaul of the immigration system in the country. Democrats were quick to decry the Republican efforts to link the bombings with immigration reform.

Democrat Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont said that opponents of the immigration reform started exploiting the Boston Marathon and request there be restraint regarding that.

Nevertheless, Grassley continued to say at a second hearing over immigration that the Boston Marathon bombing should be considered a cautionary tale.

Grassley said the events in Boston should serve everyone as reminders that the immigration system in the U.S. is related directly to our national security matters and sovereignty.

The two suspects in the bombings, one who was killed and his younger brother who is recovering in a Boston Hospital, emigrated in the early 2000s from Russia. Following the bombings, questions have arisen about if the brothers, who are of Chechen descent but appear not to have ever lived in Chechnya, were ever affiliated with Chechens who are radicals.

On Friday, federal authorities announced that two brothers were suspected in the Boston bombings. The brothers are originally from Chechnya and came to the U.S. as refugees about a decade ago. The two had been living in Kyrgyzstan a republic in Central Asia and were not allowed to resettle in their war torn homeland.

The family was given visas for the U.S. under the provisions of protecting migrants from ethnic, religious or political persecution.

These revelations caused conservative critics of the immigration reform to cast a cloud of doubt over the sweeping reform bill of 844 pages.

On Friday, during a Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa questioned whether lawmakers were moving forward too quickly on the proposal.

Conservative radio hosts and bloggers made arguments of a similar nature after the authorities identified the two suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The older brother Tamerlan was killed in a gunfight early Friday morning and his brother was apprehended by police Friday evening.

One conservative radio talk show host said the Senate’s new amnesty plan was now dead on arrival. However, a number of Republican senators in support of the reform proposal acted quickly to rebut their conservative opponents.

The battle for this immigration reform proposal has just begun and will be debated for months to come on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday afternoon, President Barack Obama made his first comments on the immigration proposal calling it a clear work of compromise. He cautioned that not everyone involved would get all they wanted included in the legislation and that included himself.

Following a briefing by two of the eight senators who authored the proposal, Obama said the contents were for the most part consistent with his principles for a comprehensive reform bill for immigration. The two senators who briefed the president were Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Charles Schumer of New York.

The new proposal, said the president, would strengthen the U.S. borders with both Canada and Mexico and hold employers of immigrants more accountable if undocumented immigrants are hired knowingly. Obama also commented that the proposal provided the already 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship.

Both senators told reporters they were happy with the proposal since for the most part the President was supportive, even though Obama did have a reservation or two. The senators said this was just the beginning of the long process to bring immigration reform to the U.S. The senators commented that how there will be hearings on Capitol Hill, new amendments added to the proposal and debates held on the floor in the Senate.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said change was needed in the proposal since it excludes a number of undocumented immigrants from a path to citizenship due to minor crimes or because they cannot pay large fines.

The new accord was reached after many weeks of negotiations between industry leaders and farm worker unions and was brokered by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. The deal establishes the “blue card” for the migrant workers that are already in the U.S. without permission and allows up to, but not exceeding 336,000 visas for migrant farm workers.

The package is three fold and is very important to the huge agricultural industry of California. The deal will be worked into the immigration reform bill currently being written by eight bipartisan senators, who hope to unveil the broad reaching legislation next Tuesday.

Senator Feinstein, who is not part of the bipartisan group of eight senators, led the effort on the farm worker issue with Senator Michael Bennett a Colorado Democrat and Senator Marco Rubio a Florida Republican, whom are members of a broader group along with Senator
Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican.

Feinstein said that everyone involved has endorsed the new agreement. Talks have been going on for a number of months, but snagged when growers pushed to have lower wages and less limits on the number of visas, while farm labor unions sought visa caps and higher wages.

In the end, the growers achieved their two goals, with wages raised slightly and more visas becoming available than in offers that had been made earlier. Labor leaders in exchange secured a longer visa period and requirements that the farms pay transportation and housing costs.

The group will be called FWD.us or Forward U.S. and will make its initial thrust on the immigration overhaul. Besides Zuckerberg the other founders of the group included John Doerr, a venture capitalist who has backed both Amazon.com and Google, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt and others.

There are also a list of well-known political players including Rob Jesmer, the National Republican Senatorial Committee former executive director, Dan Denor a veteran of the Bush administration, Joe Lockhart the former press secretary for former President Clinton and Jeff Pollock a pollster for the Democratic Party.

It is still undetermined what the group is planning but campaign support, ads, grassroots organizing and public communications will all be part of the mix, a voice familiar with the group said.

President and co-founder of the group Joe Green, apologized last week after a prospectus of the group was leaked with names of some executives that still had not committed, such as Bill Gates the co-founder of Microsoft.

Following the announcement on Thursday, the group’s initial focus will be on the passage of the overhaul of immigration. Tech companies are pushing to increase the total H-1B visas for high-skilled tech workers from outside the U.S.

Charles Schumer the Democratic Senator from New York told reporters that senators in the Group of Eight, the bipartisan group of four Republicans and four Democrats, had resolved the major issues that were pending for the deal and the staffs of each were putting the legislation into the appropriate language.

Schumer said all eight senators had agreed that no deal would be reached until each one agreed. After a number of bumps along the way, Schumer said the senators finally came to an agreement.

Last month the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest labor union federation and the biggest business group in the U.S. respectively, reached an agreement over the program for guest workers and that cleared the way for completion of the bill, said insiders.

Included in the new legislation will be a pathway that must be earned to become a U.S. citizen for the undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. Estimates are that over 11 million currently work and live in the U.S.

In addition, the legislation will contain language bolstering the security on the country’s borders and ways for U.S. businesses to meet their needs for both low-skilled and high-skilled workers.

John McCain, a Republican Senator from Arizona appeared with Schumer and said he agreed that the new bill would be ready at the end of the week.

Another version of immigration reform is being prepared in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.