Washington - The Senate will vote after 6:45pm today on both the Menendez-Hagel immigration bill amendment dealing with the family visa backlog and a new "side-by-side" backlog amendment drafted by Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ).

The amendment submitted by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) (#1194) would include family-based visa applicants who legally applied before January 1, 2007 in the backlog-clearing process. The bill currently only includes those who applied before May 1, 2005, forcing an estimated 833,000 family members to start from scratch under a completely new system.

Sen. Menendez released the following statement about the Kyl side-by-side amendment:

"This new amendment is a sleight-of-hand attempt to siphon off Republicans who wanted to support the fundamental fairness embodied by my amendment," said Menendez. "Make no mistake, this new amendment is merely smoke and mirrors. With a vague definition of who is eligible and without an increase in visas to accommodate the additional applicants, hundreds of thousands of family members of American citizens and legal residents who were going through a legal process will be kicked out of line and put behind those who broke the law."

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