WASHINGTON (AFP) - The individual fates of millions of illegal immigrants are in the balance as US lawmakers gird for debate on a sweeping immigration law overhaul, one that could also boost the Iraq-scarred legacy of President George W. Bush.
After marathon talks, Bush on Thursday won support from key senators for a bill to legalize as many as 12 million undocumented workers now in the United States.
Senators backing the bill are hoping to hustle it through a debate in Congress from Monday, with all aware that delays could see it fall victim to the upcoming national election cycle, as it did last year.
But the bill has already run into hostility, forcing Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to insist that it does not amount to an "amnesty" for the millions now in the country unlawfully.
To gain legal status, they would have to pay fines and undergo a criminal background check, he said on CNN Sunday.
"I have the impression that perhaps for some people, the only thing that would not be amnesty is mass deportation," added Gutierrez, whose family fled to the United States from Cuba when he was a child.
"We don't think that is practical. We don't think that's logical. We don't think that's humane. And that would hurt our economy."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stressed that the bill also contains ramped-up security including a fence, radar towers, aerial surveillance and 18,000 more patrol agents along the Mexican border.
Senators who crafted the compromise, like veteran Democrat Edward Kennedy, are pushing their hefty bill to a procedural vote on Monday that critics argue would short-circuit debate.
Chertoff urged critics to come forward with a better solution.
"But if all people want to do is complain and say, well, this isn't good enough, that's the Goldilocks solution, where it's always too hot or too cold," he said on CNN.
"I think the public has lost patience with that and they want us to fix the problem."
The bipartisan compromise establishes a temporary worker program, under which illegal aliens could apply for a renewable "Z" visa and pay a 1,000-dollar fine.
Participants could eventually seek permanent residency and citizenship, but only after returning to their countries of origin and paying an additional 4,000-dollar fine.
Bush, his popularity slumping over the war in Iraq, hopes the bill will earn him an enduring policy success towards the end of a second term that has been short on domestic legislative breakthroughs.
In Bush's first term, with Congress under Republican control, his immigration reforms succeeded in the Senate but were blocked by the House of Representatives ahead of last November's elections.
In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush said the reform will "restore respect for the law, and meet the legitimate needs of our economy."
But Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives who is considering a 2008 White House run, called the bill "a big-government fantasy with no hope of becoming reality."
Republican Representative Tom Tancredo, a long-shot presidential candidate, called the plan "a slap in the face" of hard-working Americans.
But Senator Mel Martinez, another Cuban-born Republican, said the bill "could be the saving of the Republican party."
"I hope we can move the bill through the Senate this week," he told CNN.
Liberal Democrats objected that the plan would limit the right of legal immigrants to be joined by their families, instead favoring applicants with higher education and skills.
In an ABC News interview broadcast Sunday, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill was correct to address the growing backlog of foreign aliens waiting for US papers.
"But the family unification principles which had been fundamental to American immigration are disrupted by what is there now," she said.