It came after months of secretive talks among the four Republican and four Democratic House members had seemed to stall in recent days even as an immigration bill in the Senate moved forward. The House members met for two hours Thursday evening, emerging to announce they had a deal.

“We have an agreement in principle. We’re now going to work on finishing up the drafting of the bill,” said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, a leader of the group.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., another member, said over Twitter: “Important breakthrough, some details still to be worked out, but very pleased things are moving forward.”

Carter and others declined to give details, saying they’d agreed among themselves not to do so.

Group members had been saying for months that they were near a deal, but in recent days talks appeared close to breaking down over a few unresolved details. These included a new visa program for lower-skilled workers, and how to handle health care coverage for immigrants in the country illegally who would gain legal status under the bill. Lawmakers and aides suggested earlier Thursday that one option would be for the group to release a bipartisan bill that simply left those issues out, allowing Republicans and Democrats in the group to offer their own plans on those aspects of the legislation.

Meanwhile, members of the group were under pressure to deliver from other lawmakers and outside advocates who feared they would lose their window to have a voice in the debate if they didn’t produce something soon. A bill released last month by leading senators is moving toward a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee and has become the focus of the immigration debate.

“I am concerned that the bipartisan group has been unable to wrap up their work,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters earlier Thursday, before the group announced its deal. “And I know that there are some very difficult issues that have come up. But I continue to believe that the House needs to deal with this and the House needs to work its will. How we get there, we’re still dealing with it.”

The House group had struggled to come up with a plan that could have a possibility of passing the Republican-controlled House while also satisfying Democrats in the group. They have discussed a path to citizenship that would take 15 years for the estimated 11 million people living here illegally, two years longer than contemplated by the Senate bill, which is backed by Obama.

Overall, the legislation would share the same goals as the Senate plan: boosting border security, an increased focus on workplace enforcement, new means to allow workers to enter this country legally and the eventual prospect of citizenship for millions.

As the House group bogged down, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., separately has moved forward with individual, narrowly focused bills on immigration, including one on workplace enforcement that was discussed at a hearing Thursday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held its third work session Thursday to plow through some 300 amendments to the Senate immigration legislation. The committee voted down an amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that would have required the implementation of an electronic employer ID verification system in 18 months, instead of the four years contemplated by the bill.

Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – two of the bill’s Republican authors – voted with Democrats against the amendment, which was defeated 13-5. So did Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a potential swing vote on the bill.

Thursday’s committee action was low-key, but behind the scenes efforts were under way to reach a deal on a series of amendments by Hatch that would benefit the high-tech community by making it easier for companies to access and use H-1B visas, which go to highly skilled workers. The bill increases the supply of these visas but also adds in protections aimed at ensuring U.S. workers get the first shot at jobs, and tech companies have objected to some of those provisions, which have been championed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a principle author of the bill, was working with Hatch to try to find a compromise but the issue was unlikely to be resolved before next week.

In addition to Carter, Republicans in the House group are Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, Sam Johnson of Texas and Raul Labrador of Idaho. On the Democratic side, in addition to Gutierrez, they are Zoe Lofgren and Xavier Becerra of California and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.

“If more people come to this country, the demand for housing will be higher,” says Andrew Winkler, the Director of Housing Policy for the American Action Forum, and the author of the study. He based his findings on home ownership by age group in the last two years. The number of future homeowner is a conservative number, Winkler explains, because the projections are for foreign-born immigrants and do not account for the 11 million undocumented who already live in the United States.

The important thing to remember, says Winkler, is that the areas hardest hit by the housing bust are the areas with most immigrants like California, Texas, and Nevada so adding new homeowners in those areas would be beneficial for the entire economy.

“Since there is low inventory, immigrants buying more homes will have several economic benefits,” says Wrinkler, “Not only will there be more construction, and job creation, but when you buy a home, you buy furniture, you paint, all things that add to the economy recovery.”

His argument is that the failure to pass immigration reform will be a loss of economic opportunity to build stronger communities. Right now, immigrants face a lot of barriers to be able to buy a home so once given the right documentation and legal status, Wrinkler says, then more immigrants will try to obtain the American dream and buy a home.

A recent report from the University of Southern California found almost 36 percent of the increased demand for U.S. homes this decade is generated by immigrants.  Though the number is down 39 percent the last decade, the report projects  the majority of the growth will come from foreign-born buyers in six states: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Michigan.  In California alone, immigrant buyers will be 71 percent of growth in owner households in this decade.

“Immigrants will be key to the housing market for decades to come,” said Mark Zandi, economist with Moody’s Analytics to USA Today.

The answer is somewhere in between, depending as much on new technologies and the U.S. education system’s ability to keep up as on the immigration law itself. But the sliver of computer-related jobs inside the U.S. that might be designated for foreigners – fewer than 200,000 out of 6 million – has been enough to strain a bipartisan deal in the Senate on immigration reform, showcase the power of big labor and splinter a once-chummy group of elite tech leaders hoping to make inroads in Washington.

RELATED: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg unveils pro-immigration advocacy group

“A lot of people agree that employers should have access to (highly trained) immigrants – that they are a benefit to the country, and we are a country of immigrants,” said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. “I think the question is how much of a good thing is good.”

The Senate immigration bill – the result of months of quiet negotiations among eight influential senators – is on track to nearly double the number of highly skilled foreign workers allowed to work in the U.S. under what’s called an H-1B visa, from 65,000 to 110,000. The number of visas could climb as high as 180,000 depending on the number of applications received and the unemployment rate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee planned to take up the portion of the bill relating to H-1B visas on Thursday, paving the way for an eventual floor vote and setting the tone for debate in the House.

RELATED: 10 things you need to know about the Senate immigration bill 

The expansion of H-1B visas is considered the first major victory for Zuckerberg’s new nonprofit lobbying organization, FWD.us, which receives financial backing from such big tech names as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Napster pioneer Sean Parker. In announcing the group, pronounced “forward us,” Zuckerberg in April called for changes so that U.S. businesses could attract “the most-talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.”

But support for FWD.us appeared to crack this week after the group’s subsidiary ran television ads backing Republican senators who support immigration reform but also unpopular environmental programs, including the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Two backers of FWD.us – including PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, who now runs electric-car maker Tesla Motors – pulled their support for the group, and several left-leaning groups, including the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org, protested the ads.

Frustration by some tech leaders was captured on Twitter, where site co-founder Evan Williams linked to a blog post on his new company’s website that accused FWD.us of “employing questionable lobbying techniques, misleading supporters and not being transparent about the underlying values and long-term intentions of the organization.”

In an emailed statement, FWD.us spokeswoman Kate Hansen said: “We recognize that not everyone will always agree with or be pleased by our strategy – and we’re grateful for the continued support of our dedicated founders and major contributors. FWD.us remains totally committed to supporting a bipartisan policy agenda that will boost the knowledge economy, including comprehensive immigration reform.”

H-1B visa applications can be complex and often are used when a qualified American candidate can’t be found for a specialized job in a specific city. The visa candidate typically costs the company money and time, including extensive paperwork.

The flip side is that once a company is permitted to hire a foreign worker, that employee has little leverage to demand a raise or leave for a company’s competitor without putting his or her visa at risk.

Scot Melland, president and chief executive of Dice Holdings Inc., which operates a career website devoted to tech jobs, said Dice.com has more than 80,000 positions posted on its site, which turn over an average of every two weeks. And while his company doesn’t track how many jobs result in H-1B visa hires, Melland said he predicts that the number of tech jobs and high salaries available to Americans is likely to grow for some time. He said expanding the H-1B program is necessary, so long as safeguards prevent companies from exploiting foreign workers.

“As long as it’s not abused, you’re still talking about a small fraction of the tech labor market,” Melland said.

Lowell said the number of information technology jobs affected by H-1B candidates is closer to 2.5 million than the broader pool of 6 million computer-related jobs frequently cited by industry. He said this more specialized labor market could become distorted by the Senate’s plan to increase the number of legal immigrants overall.

According to a recent report by the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, the number of skilled guest workers has increased sharply in recent years while only 1 in 2 U.S. college graduates with high-tech degrees can find a job in their field.

“You have to question why we would want to import an increasing number of foreign workers,” said Lowell, who co-wrote the report.

“Under DeMint’s watch, the foundation has released a widely-criticized ‘economic study’ about the cost of immigration reform that was disturbingly anti-immigrant and openly hostile to immigrant families,” said Kica Matos, the Center for Community Change’s Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice.

Matos adds that an online petition has garnered 6,600 signatures in less than a week and claims DeMint has earned his pink slip by promoting theories of racial inferiority.

In a statement e-mailed to NBCLatino, the Heritage Foundation responded by saying “The Heritage Foundation and its President Jim DeMint believe that all men are created equal, which is why we advocate color-blind public policies. We decry the fact that our present welfare state makes it more difficult for people of all ethnicities to reach the American Dream. We strongly support immigration reform to fix our broken system, so that we can encourage lawful immigration from which our nation has benefitted from for over two centuries.”

But Erendira Rendon, from the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, who was in town to attend the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up session, who joined in the protest disagrees. She says the Heritage report shows conservatives are willing to do anything to stop immigration reform.

“This was an appalling failure of leadership. And it is disappointing to see the Heritage Foundation take up offensive and racist rhetoric rather than take the path other Republicans are forging toward achieving immigration reform,” said Rendon.

NBCLatino reached out to the Heritage Foundation for comment but as of this publishing there was no response.

“If they (the Administration) can’t get a hold and change the narrative, it’s going to cause a lot of trouble for the White House,” said Republican strategist Danny Vargas on MSNBC today.

So will the focus on these issues and controversies derail an immigration bill from reaching the President’s desk by the end of the summer?

Immigration supporters in the Senate say this is not the case.

“We are really making a lot of headway through the Senate Judiciary Committee right now; in fact, it’s getting done as we speak,” says José Parra, director of Hispanic media and Deputy Director of Communications for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“Senator Reid has said from the beginning this is one of his top if not the top priority, and he continues to think so,” states Parra. “He intends to have it on the floor in the month of June,” he adds.

Katherine Vargas, White House Director of Hispanic Media, says the President summed it up best in a recent news conference .  ”I feel confident that the bipartisan work that’s been done on immigration reform will result in a bill that passes the Senate, passes the House, and gets on my desk. And that’s going to be a historic achievement,”  said President Obama, when asked about the prospects of immigration legislation this year.

But others, like University of Notre Dame professor Allert Brown-Gort, are not so sure.

“It’s not whether Benghazi or the IRS or AP sucks the oxygen out of the room for immigration reform – it’s whether some Republicans, especially in the House, will use this as an excuse to put off hearings and not move the legislation forward,” says Brown-Gort, a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Brown-Gort says that while the Republican party leadership and the “intelligentsia” are pushing for it, “their base is saying ‘no’ – the Republicans got hoisted on their own petard on the success of the word amnesty,’ he adds.

Immigration reform advocates point to the fact that only a small group of House Republicans joined a press conference yesterday against the current immigration reform bill.  ”The House press conference underscored the fact that these opponents are rapidly losing influence,” said America’s Voice Frank Sharry. Conservative Republican Congressman Steve Stockman said in the press conference they will have a “gang of millions” against the bill.

In the meantime, the Senate Judiciary Committee meets tomorrow again – and at least in the Senate, the bill is on its way.

“I don’t apologize for any of the things that I said,” Richwine told the Washington Examiner. “But I do regret that I couldn’t give more detail. And I also regret that I didn’t think more about how the average lay person would perceive these things, as opposed to an academic audience.”

In comments widely published from his dissertation last week, Richwine wrote that “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

NBC Latino has repeatedly reached out to Richwine for comment without receiving a response.

RELATED: Heritage immigration study co-author: Latinos incapable of assimilating like Irish, Sicilians

Youtube videos released by the American Enterprise Institute where he used to work, shortly after the dissertation surfaced, showed that he disagreed with the idea that all races and ethnicities are equally likely to assimilate. He said blacks, Native Americans and Mexicans have shown an inability to assimilate and that unlike the Irish and Sicilians, some groups have little chance of assimilating.

“We have blacks, we have American Indians and even early Mexican-Americans who have been living in the country for a long time and have not assimilated to the cultural mainstream as typified by white Americans,” he said.

In his first comments since resigning, Richwine said he regretted not going into the nuance of information regarding IQs. “”I am a much better writer than I am a speaker. I probably would have written those things differently than I spoke them. What I emphasized was that ethnic group differences in IQ are scientifically uncontroversial,” he said.

“That being said, there is a nuance that goes along with that: the extent to which IQ scores actually reflect intelligence, the fact that it reflects averages and there is a lot of overlap in any population, and that IQ scores say absolutely nothing about the causes of the differences — environmental, genetic, or some combination of those things,” he added.

In talking about how the controversy affected him, Richwine said the accusations of being a racist were the toughest to deal with.

“The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life,” he said. “Once that word is out there, it’s very difficult to recover from it, even when it is completely untrue.”

RELATED: Heritage immigration study co-author resigns after past writings on Hispanics having low IQ surfaces

“The Senate’s bipartisan legislation is really a historic step, but should not exclude the littlest Dreamers,” added Senator Blumenthal.

Immigration reform advocates praise the Dreamer component of the current Senate immigration reform bill, which allows “DREAMers” over the age of 16 who came here as children, have earned a high school diploma or GED and either serve in the military or attend college for at least 2 years to have a “fast track” to legal permanent residency after 5 years instead of 10 years for other undocumented immigrants.

Under the current bill, explained Senator Blumenthal in a conference call today, the children “would almost certainly be forced to wait 13 years for a pathway to earned citizenship – though they were brought here through no fault of their own,” he said, putting them in the same position as their older Dreamer brothers and sisters.

United We Dream‘s Lorella Praeli said Blumenthal’s amendment would address the children who, five years after the law is enacted, would still not be 18 years old , so they could not complete the requirement of higher education or a military component, Praeli explained.

Blumenthal also submitted 17 other amendments to the immigration bill, including a proposal to crack down on the use of solitary confinement at immigration detention centers. “Every day in this country more than 300 immigrant detainees are held in solitary confinement, and nearly half will remain there long enough to pose a risk of permanent psychological damage,” the Connecticut senator says in his website.  Another amendment makes human trafficking a “Part I violent crime” and gives officers more training to identify victims and more resources to deter trafficking. This amendment was accepted and will be included in the bill.

While the Senate debates the immigration bill, a group today called on President Obama to issue a directive to stop deporting people who would qualify to stay in the country if the bill becomes law.  ”By the end of the day 1100 people will be taken away from their families — and they are not gang bangers like President Obama described them,”  said Pablo Alvarado, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON).

Yvette Martinez, a U.S. citizen, said in a press call today that her husband Roger Tabora Martinez, an undocumented immigrant with no criminal record, was deported last week. Groups like MALDEF, AFL-CIO and NDLON argue that deportations for those who have not committed serious criminal offenses are still taking place.  ”We are asking the president to exercise discretion and cease deportations for those who qualify under the proposal of the Group of 8,” said MALDEF president and CEO Thomas Saenz.

RELATED: With 300 amendments, advocates brace for tough start to Senate immigration hearings

And on border security, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley insisted on an amendment ensuring that the entire U.S.-Mexico border — not just the high-risk areas as originally proposed — be fully secured. Grassley said the original bill “unfortunately looks too much like 1986, which failed to take care of problems I want solved,” referring to the fact that the U.S. saw a high number of undocumented immigrants in the decades after the 1986 immigration law.

But 2013 is a different story, according to reports from groups such as the New Democratic Network and the Immigration Policy Center. “Look, part of the argument you hear is that we can never allow what happened before to happen again,” says NDN’s Simon Rosenberg. “But what is also part of the argument is that it will never happen again because it can’t happen again,” he adds.

The reason is Mexico, says Rosenberg. The American public is not getting the full picture of the current state of Mexico’s economy and its increasing importance as a trading partner. Mexico is the world’s 12th largest economy and America’s second-largest export market. Trade with Mexico has gone from $300 billion in 2009 to $536 billion in 2012, according to NDN’s new report, “Realizing the Strategic National Value of our Trade, Tourism and Ports of Entry with Mexico.“

Texas Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela said Mexico-Texas trade alone is $285 million, and has created over 3,000 jobs in Texas. The Immigration Policy Center’s “Lost in the Shadow of the Fence” states there was a 9.1 percent increase in goods exported to Mexico from the U.S. in just one year, from 2011 to 2012.

RELATED: Obama: US-Mexico stereotypes must be broken

As to senators’ worries about large numbers of undocumented immigrants coming through the border, things are very different than they were during previous years, argues Rosenberg. “With Mexico’s declining birthrate and a growing middle class, the ability of Mexico to export labor will never be like what it was right before NAFTA,” he says.

RELATED: Mexican immigration to U.S. in deep decline

On border security, the Immigration Policy Center states that while there is a need to secure the borders, “there is also a need for further streamlining and efficiently facilitating the daily cr0ss-border flows of people, goods, and services important to our bi-national economy.

“The recent immigration reform bill did put in for over 3,000 additional customs agents, which Rosenberg says recognizes “a healthier and holistic” view of the border and the U.S.-Mexico relationship. And in a recent trip President Obama highlighted Mexico’s increasing economic interdependence with the U.S.

Still, say groups like NDN and the Immigration Policy Center, the reality of the border in 2013 is not always reflected in the current immigration debates.

“We can only make good policy if we have the facts,” says Rosenberg.

“Jason Richwine let us know he’s decided to resign from his position. He’s no longer employed by Heritage. It is our long-standing policy not to discuss internal personnel matters,” The Heritage Foundation wrote in a statement given to NBC Latino.

Richwine’s comments, which included the belief that Hispanics and blacks were “inassimilable” as compared to past Irish and Sicilian immigrants, were amplified because he was a co-author on a controversial immigration study by The Heritage Foundation.

NBC Latino reached out repeatedly to Richwine and did not receive a response.

RELATED: Heritage immigration study co-author: Latinos incapable of assimilating like Irish, Sicilians

The study calculated the cost of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants as $6.3 trillion.  The study was dismissed by many across the political spectrum including Florida Senator Marco Rubio and prominent conservative organizations, who questioned the methodology used to calculate the cost.

The Heritage Foundation took to its blog to distance itself and its study from the theories espoused by Richwine.

It said the dissertation was “not a work product of The Heritage Foundation” and “its findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers, as race and ethnicity are not part of Heritage immigration policy recommendations.”

Latino organizations including The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) blasted Richwine for his dissertation.

Kica Matos, director of  Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change, doesn’t think the issue ends with Richwine’s resignation.

“This resignation is far too little and too late.  The time to remedy this racist and lie-filled report was long before it was issued,” she said.

“The leadership of the Heritage Foundation made an intentional choice to use the research of a white supremacist and to issue a report that obviously portrayed immigrants in an unfair, inaccurate and bigoted light.  It is the leadership of the Heritage Foundation and Jim DeMint himself who should be held accountable.  Jim DeMint should resign,” added Matos.

RELATED: Heritage immigration study co-author: Hispanics will have low-IQ children and grandchildren

In a cavernous room packed with lobbyists and immigration activists, the panel rejected three attempts by opponents of the bill to impose tougher conditions on border security before unauthorized immigrants could apply for legal status. Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona – part of a bipartisan group that helped draft the measure – joined all 10 Democrats in blocking each of the changes.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who has yet to announce a position on the overall legislation, opposed one of the proposed changes but backed others.

RELATED: On immigration bill, it’s Republican versus Republican

Assuming the core political alignment remains intact, the committee is expected to approve the measure within two weeks and clear the way for an epic showdown on the Senate floor in June.

White House aides watched from the sidelines as the committee began its work on a bill that President Barack Obama has made a top priority in the opening months of his second term in the White House.

Painstakingly negotiated by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” the measure would clear the way for tens of thousands of new high-tech and lesser-skilled workers to enter the country while also requiring all employers to check the legal status of their employees. But it was the core trade-off – securing the border against future illegal immigration while setting up a 13-year process by which immigrants unlawfully in the country could qualify for citizenship – that generated the most controversy by far.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who helped draft the bill, said it would “change our policy so that the people who are needed to help our economy grow can come into this country, and at the same time we will note that when families are divided the humane thing to do is bring those families back together.

“Because we so dramatically stop the flow of illegal immigration, we can do both. And we do, and do it fairly.”

Republican critics made no claim they can defeat the bill in committee and concentrated instead on casting doubt on assertions that it will secure the U.S.-Mexican border before it allows immigrants illegally in the United States to take their first steps toward legal status.

“The triggers in the bill that kick off legalization are weak,” said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, referring to a series of requirements that must be met before unauthorized immigrants can apply for legal status. “No one can dispute that this bill is legalization first, enforcement later.”

He said the last extensive overhaul of immigration in 1986 had also claimed it would end illegal immigration. “We thought we were so certain…and we screwed up,” he said of those who voted for the bill 37 years ago, himself among them.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said he feared the result of the measure would be a shell game in which “amnesty takes effect but not enforcement.”

The first challenge came on Grassley’s proposal to require six months to elapse between the time the southern border is secured and immigrants may begin seeking legal status, a step that Schumer said would “delay, probably forever, any legalization” for immigrants now living in the country without authorization.

The second was advanced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and sought to require that both houses of Congress vote to declare the border secure before the citizenship process could begin. Under the legislation as drafted, the secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to make that declaration.

“Many of us are concerned that the border fencing and security triggers in this bill leave too much discretion to the secretary,” Lee said.

Graham said he feared the result would inevitably be deadlock, in which the Democratic-controlled Senate would declare the border secure while the Republican-controlled House would counter that it was not.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, later tried to require that the number of U.S. border patrol agents be tripled on the U.S.-Mexico border and the amount of equipment stationed there be quadrupled before any immigrant could apply for a change in legal status.

Hatch, who had supported the two earlier GOP proposals, opposed Cruz’ plan.

The day’s proceedings unfolded as the committee worked its way through more than 300 amendments, some of them noncontroversial and others intensely so.

Eager to demonstrate their openness to changes, Democrats stressed that they had agreed to a number of Republican proposals.

One, advanced by Grassley, specifies that a requirement for 90 percent of would-be border crossers to be stopped or turned back must apply to the entire southern border, not just “high-risk” sectors.

But a verdict on perhaps the most contentious proposal – to assure that immigrants in the country illegally are treated the same regardless of sexual orientation – is not expected to come to a vote until next week or the week after. Gay rights groups are adamantly seeking the provision be inserted into the measure, but Republicans have warned that could splinter the coalition behind the bill and doom its chances for passage.

The legislation was drafted by Democratic Sens. Schumer and Dick Durbin of Illinois, who are on the committee, and Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado, who are not, as well as Flake and Graham and Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain of Arizona.

Under the legislation as drafted, immigrants who entered the United States illegally before Dec. 31, 2011 and have been in the country since then may apply for Registered Provisional Immigrant status. To qualify, they must pass a background check, have no serious criminal conviction on their record, pay any back taxes they owe and a $500 fine.

At the end of a decade, they may apply for permanent residency, pay an additional fine of $1,000 and meet other requirements. After an additional three years, they may apply for naturalization.

—