“We are deeply concerned with the academic integrity and the reputation of Harvard Kennedy School and the University as a whole,” the petition began. “Central to his claim is the idea that certain groups are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others. In his troubling worldview Asians are generally at the  top, with whites in the middle, Hispanics follow, and African Americans at the bottom,” it continued.

The petition was presented to Harvard Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood, who released a statement to NBC Latino.

“I most certainly understand that this issue, as reported, troubles many people,” Ellwood said. “First, the views and conclusions of any graduate of this school are theirs alone, and do not represent the views of Harvard or the Kennedy School.  Second, all Ph.D. dissertations are reviewed by a committee of scholars.”

RELATED: Jason Richwine on Hispanic IQ comments: “I don’t apologize for any of the things that I said”

He added that the committee consisted of three highly respected and discerning faculty members who come from diverse intellectual traditions.

“Finally and most importantly, it is vital that an active and open debate of ideas occur in Universities and beyond them,” he continued. “Scholars and others who disagree with particular ideas or methods or who are unhappy with conclusions can and must openly engage in reasoned discussion and criticism, after looking fully and carefully at the work.  It is through ongoing vigorous give and take that good ideas will ultimately emerge and weaker ones can be displaced.”

NBC Latino has repeatedly reached out to Richwine for comment on the reaction to his dissertation but has not received a response.

According to the Boston Globe, Richwine took issue with the student petition. “I wonder what thoughts they would seek to ban in the future,’’ he said. “This is a really worrisome idea here, that the students want to dictate what scholarship will be allowed at Harvard University.”

Fernando Berdion Del Valle, a student spokesman for the petition and Kennedy School masters candidate in public policy, said that as a son of two Hispanic immigrants, he was angered by the dissertation.

“For me, it was important to get involved in this effort because this issue affects all of us,” he said. “It’s not just about Hispanics or Latinos. It’s about all Americans who believe that research can be open, academically rigorous, and ethically sound.”

Berdion Del Valle said its important to remember  that research funded and approved by Harvard has an impact on real-world policies.

“If Harvard doesn’t apply rigorous academic standards for its research, how can we guarantee our policy discussions are not affected by irresponsible scholarship?”

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

Lawmakers called it a step toward a more expansive biometric system that would use identifiers such as fingerprints to keep track of immigrants and visitors exiting the U.S. Currently no such system is in place, something viewed as a security weakness, particularly because some 40 percent of the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally overstayed their visas and there’s no good system for tracking them.

“This is an agreement that we need to build toward a biometric visa exit system,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who offered the amendment by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who was absent Monday. “Implementing this biometric exit system is long overdue.”

A full-fledged biometric entry-exit system is favored by many senators but was deemed too expensive and unworkable to include in the bill. Current law already requires such a system to be in place, but the Department of Homeland Security has not implemented it. Instead the bill seeks electronic scanning of photo IDs.

Under Hatch’s amendment, the nation’s 10 busiest airports would have to establish a fingerprinting system within two years after enactment of the immigration bill. Within six years it would have to be in place at the 30 busiest airports.

The amendment passed 13 to 5.

“The entire system, as current law requires, should be implemented,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who voted no. “It’s a retreat from current law, a weakening of current law.”

The committee last week rejected an amendment by Sessions to fully implement a biometric screening system. After Sessions’ amendment failed, one of the authors of the immigration bill, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced publicly that he regretted the failure of Sessions’ amendment and would continue pushing for a biometric system to be put in place. The passage of Hatch’s amendment Monday allows authors of the legislation to argue that they’re working to boost security provisions in the bill as Rubio and others have said is necessary to ensure its passage.

The vote happened as the Senate Judiciary Committee plunged Monday into its third week of deliberations on the immigration legislation, which aims to secure the borders, improve workplace enforcement and legal immigration, and offer eventual citizenship to millions of people here illegally. The committee is wading through around 300 amendments as it aims for a final vote on the bill by Wednesday night. Democrats have enough votes on the committee to ensure its passage, which would send it to the Senate floor.

Also Monday the committee approved adding more visas for Tibetans, increasing information sharing among federal agencies when people overstay their visas, and tightening up the nation’s asylum and refugee system so that people would lose their asylum or refugee status if they returned home to the country they fled, unless they can show a good reason for doing so.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the asylum change was merited in light of the Boston Marathon bombings. The brothers who allegedly set off the bombs arrived in the U.S. as boys when their family sought asylum here.

An attempt by Sessions to block immigrants who gain legal status under the bill from getting the earned income tax credit was defeated on a party-line vote.

“We’re having people from all political beliefs coming over, saying how excited they are about my candidacy and how they can’t wait to send someone who is not a career politician to Washington,” he says.

In liberal-leaning Massachusetts, Gabriel Gomez touts himself as politician who promises to work across the aisle. “I am not going to tow the ideological hard-line,” says Gomez in an interview with NBC Latino.  ”In DC you have not only career politicians but hyper-partisan politicians who refuse to work across the aisle, and we can’t do that,” Gomez says.

In Massachusetts, this is a wise strategy, says Arizona State University political scientist Rodolfo Espino. ”If he wants to win, he needs a message appropriate to his state’s base – he just needs to say enough to appeal to more than half of the electorate, and in Massachusetts, you have to be left of center” says Espino.

While Gomez is a Catholic married father of 4, he supports gay marriage. On abortion, while Gomez has been facing many questions on what he does and does not support, Gomez repeatedly says he does not believe in overturning Roe versus Wade, though he is personally opposed to abortion. Gomez supports immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, though he says he agrees with Senators Rubio and McCain on securing the border as a priority.

“Ninety nine-point nine percent of undocumented immigrants are like you and me, good people who are here because it’s better than where they came from, and want to be taxpayers and in many cases start their own business,” he says. “It’s not just a moral issue – it’s a net plus on the economic side.”

To win the Republican primary, Gomez emphasized his background – and this is still his main selling point in the Senate race. Gomez is a former Navy fighter pilot as well as a former Navy Seal.  And being the son of Colombian immigrants, explains Gomez, has given him a unique – and optimistic – perspective.  ”I saw how hard my parents worked, and how my country embraced my parents with open arms – that was one of the reasons I decided to join the military, to give back,” he says.

He also touts his years in the military as a plus if he gets elected. “It gives me real experience with national security issues and threats we’re facing – we were reminded of the dangers we’re living with here in Boston a month ago,” he says. Gomez ran in the Boston marathon that day, but was not injured. Veterans issues, he adds, would be one of his top priorities in Washington.

After the military, Gomez obtained his MBA at Harvard, and then made his wealth in the private equity business. He says he would use his experience in the private sector to clear the “uncertainty” businesses are feeling right now. Gomez is opposed to the Affordable Care Act; he thinks there should be basic access to healthcare only through the state, like in Massachusetts. When asked if he would vote to repeal the ACA, he says he would vote to repeal parts of it, like the medical device tax.

Moderate Republicans in more liberal states like Massachusetts face a double challenge. If they are elected in the first place, their more liberal stance clashes with the conservative base in the Republican party, which was the case with former Republican Senator Scott Brown.  ”Brown had initial Tea Party support, but as he was elected they soured on him for some of the stances he took,” says Espino.

Still, Gomez says he feels “great enthusiasm” about his campaign, which today released his first ad.  ”For a kid who didn’t know English until he came to school, I’ve lived the American Dream,” he says in the ad.

As a Latino politician, Espino says, Gomez’ more affluent and educated immigrant background shows that  ”the life experiences of Latinos are very diverse,  just like that of white politicians.”

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.

U.S. District Judge David Campbell denied a request from immigrant rights advocates for a preliminary injunction and threw out one of their arguments, but their lawsuit remains alive as they pursue arguments that the young immigrants are suffering from unequal treatment.

Arizona’s refusal to view those in President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as legal residents has become the most visible challenge to his announcement in June that some young immigrants would be protected from deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has said immigrants with work permits issued under the policy are lawfully present in the U.S.

Campbell rejected the argument by immigrant rights advocates who said Brewer’s policy was unconstitutional because it’s trumped by federal law.

“This portion of the ruling is not only a victory for the state of Arizona – it is a victory for states’ rights, the rule of law and the bedrock principles that guide our nation’s legislative process and the division of power between the federal government and states,” Brewer said in a statement.

But the judge said the immigrant rights advocates are likely to succeed in arguing that the state lets some immigrants with work permits get driver’s licenses but won’t let immigrants protected under Obama’s program have the same benefit.

Cecillia Wang, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups representing the immigrants, said those who challenged Brewer’s policy will examine their options in court for protecting the young immigrants.

“It’s keeping people out on a limb,” Wang said of the ruling.

Last summer, the Obama administration took administrative steps to shield thousands of immigrants from deportation. Applicants for the deferment program must have come to the U.S. before they turned 16, be younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, be in school or have graduated from high school or GED program, or have served in the military. They also were allowed to apply for a two-year renewable work permit.

Arizona’s policy allows anyone with lawful immigration status to get a driver’s license, and more than 500 immigrants with work permits have obtained Arizona driver’s licenses in recent years. But Arizona officials have said they don’t want to extend driver’s licenses to those in the new program because they don’t believe the youths will be able to stay in the country legally.

Brewer’s lawyers argued that Obama’s policy isn’t federal law and the state has the authority to distinguish between immigrants with work permits who are on the path toward permanent residency and those benefiting from Obama’s policy. The state’s lawyers argued Arizona isn’t violating its own policy by refusing to grant licenses to the immigrants in the program, because the youths haven’t been granted legal protections by Congress.

Immigrant rights advocates filed their lawsuit in November on behalf of five young-adult immigrants who were brought to the U.S. from Mexico as children. They were granted deferred-deportation protections under the Obama administration’s policy but were denied driver’s licenses in Arizona.

The lawsuit said Brewer’s policy makes it difficult or impossible for such young immigrants to do essential things in their everyday life, such as going to school, going to the grocery store, and finding and holding down a job.

A similar lawsuit was filed in Michigan after officials there initially decided to deny young immigrants licenses, but the case was dropped when the state changed its policy last month. At least 38 states have agreed to give driver’s licenses to immigrants benefiting from the Obama policy, but Nebraska and Ohio officials have also balked.

Brewer has clashed with the Obama administration in the past over illegal immigration, most notably in the challenge that the federal government filed in a bid to invalidate Arizona’s 2010 immigration law. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law’s most contentious section, but threw out other sections.

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.

In all, immigration will surpass natural increase – births minus deaths – as the main driver of population growth by midcentury, the Census Bureau said.

The new numbers show how projections could vary from last year’s government prediction that white children will become a minority in 2018 and the overall white population will follow in 2043, based on what happens to the economy and immigration policy. As a whole, the U.S. population is projected to climb to 400 million by 2051. Those dates remain the official census projections, and they are based on the assumption that immigration continues to climb.

The 2046 estimate of a white minority is one of three new alternative projections based on rates for births and deaths and a scenario in which immigration follow its recent slower pace of adding more than 700,000 foreigners each year.

In general, demographers have said that scenario offers an instructive look at the future demographic makeup based on current conditions, in which the economy does not significantly strengthen or weaken and immigration policies are unchanged.

The actual shift in demographics will be influenced by factors that can’t accurately be forecast. They include the pace of the economic recovery, cultural changes, natural or manmade disasters, as well as any overhaul of immigration laws based on legislation now being debated in Congress.

The United States has 315 million people today; less than 64 percent are non-Hispanic whites.

In a situation where immigration levels remain constant for the next half-century, the total population would climb to 392.7 million by 2060, with whites making up 44.7 percent of the population. Blacks would make up 12.7 percent, virtually unchanged from today. Hispanics, now 16 percent of the population, would rise to 29 percent by that year.

Asians would increase from 5 percent of the population to 7.5 percent.

The point when minority children become the majority would be delayed one year from the official projection, from 2018 to 2019.

The population 65 and older would grow rapidly, outnumbering the under-18 age group by 2038. Under the official prediction, that tipping point occurs much later, in 2056.

The Census Bureau’s varying sets of projections show immigration’s role in replenishing the population. As in many industrialized nations, the U.S. is slowly aging due to rising median age and lower birth rates.

RELATED: Latinos in US reach 52 million but growth is from births not immigration

Under the official projections released last December, immigration will become the main driver of U.S. growth by 2032. That would be the first time that natural increase from births was not the leading cause of population increase since at least 1850, putting the U.S. in the company of many other industrialized nations such as Japan and Italy that long have struggled with low growth rates.

“As a whole, the U.S. population is projected to grow more slowly, the older population is expected to grow much larger, and the minority population will grow faster,” said Jennifer Ortman, a Census Bureau demographer. “Most of the immigrants coming into the U.S. population are roughly 15 to 45 years old, so we see that immigration is bolstering the working-age population and helping it to grow.”

Several demographers say the current Senate immigration bill could change the U.S. race makeup by tightening border security and placing a higher priority on granting employment-based visas for high-skilled workers. Those changes are likely to result in a greater influx of Asian immigrants compared to Latinos.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, estimates that as a whole 150,000 fewer immigrants will enter the U.S. if the Senate bill becomes law. That is due mostly to an estimated sharp decline in illegal border crossings.

The Census Bureau says its projections should be used mostly as a guide.

The agency also released numbers showing projections based on “high” rates of immigration – more likely if government policies become more flexible and a booming U.S. economy attracts large numbers of foreigners – as well as “low” rates of increasing immigration, a possible scenario if U.S. policies don’t change much while the economy improves.

-With high immigration, the minority “tipping point” is moved up to 2041, two years earlier than the previous estimate. At that time, Asians would have a much larger share, at 9 percent, because their population growth is more dependent on immigration than birth rates. The U.S. population would reach 400 million by 2044.

-With low immigration, the “tipping point” arrives by 2045.

-The share of the working-age population, age 18 to 64, is expected to decrease based on all four projection scenarios. The official projections show that group dropping from 62.7 percent in 2012 to 56.9 percent by 2060.

-In each of the four projections, the 65 and older age group would rise from 13.7 percent to more than 20 percent by 2060.

RELATED: Latinos are now largest minority group in college campuses 

“Despite projected declines in fertility, these projections make plain that we are on the road to becoming a highly diverse nation,” said William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer. “Even under the lowest immigration assumptions, the nation will become minority white in 33 years. So those who believe that barring immigration will make the nation appreciably less diverse need to take heed of these projections

The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed by voice vote to an amendment by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa meant to ensure that border patrol agents at U.S. ports of entry have access to information on the status of student visas.

The committee action follows recent revelations that a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of the Boston bombing suspects was allowed to return to the U.S. in January without a valid student visa.

The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on Jan. 20. But the border agent in the airport did not have access to the information in the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS.

Grassley’s amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to certify that data from SEVIS is transferred into the databases used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at U.S. ports of entry. If that is not done within 120 days of enactment, issuing of student visas would be suspended.

“This will plug a loophole in terms of the tragic Boston Marathon bombing,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., an author of the immigration bill. “It really strengthens the bill and shows that our bill … is going to make things better in terms of terrorism.”

The committee also agreed to a second Grassley amendment aimed at cracking down on fraud in the student visa program. Two of the Sept. 11 terrorists entered the U.S. on student visas and Grassley said that demonstrated problems with the program. His second amendment, also approved by voice vote, would tighten accreditation requirements for schools hosting foreign students and prohibit flight schools not certified by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration from offering student visas.

The action came as the Judiciary Committee met for a second day to plow through 300 amendments to a bipartisan immigration bill that would secure the border, remake legal immigration and workplace enforcement, and put the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally on a path to citizenship.

On a day of grab-bag action, authors of the bill also banded together with other senators to turn back GOP efforts to rewrite provisions of the bill dealing with high-tech workers.

And the committee agreed to allow 10,500 new visas for African and Caribbean nations to partially make up for the elimination under the bill of a different visa program relied on by African nations. The Congressional Black Caucus had protested elimination of that program.

On the high-tech visas, lawmakers voted down several Grassley amendments that would have added more requirements for employers trying to bring high-tech workers to the U.S., as well as one by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to increase the visa supply.

The legislation’s authors said the amendments could have jeopardized support for the overall bill by striking at one of the fragile compromises at its core.

But the high-tech language in the bill, which would allow employers to bring many more workers to the U.S. while adding restrictions aimed at protecting U.S. workers, remained in question Tuesday because of amendments still pending from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

Hatch’s amendments would make the language more favorable for high-tech companies, but he said he’d hold off on offering them in hopes of reaching a compromise first.

The committee also voted down a GOP amendment that would have required biometric screening – such as fingerprinting – to track people entering and exiting the country before anyone here illegally could get permanent residency. Supporters of the bill said it would be unrealistically expensive and their bill took a more realistic route by calling for photo IDs that could be electronically read.

Border security was also the hot topic at the White House, where Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske met with representatives from 10 law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The White House said Napolitano made the case that overhauling U.S. immigration laws will help secure the border by freeing up officers to spend more time on national security threats.

“I would take Obamacare and try to live with that before I would ever accept this amnesty plan – this amnesty plan is far far worse than Obamacare,” said King.  He was referring to the 1o-year pathway to citizenship proposed in the bill, which would allow undocumented immigrants who are willing to pay fines and pay back taxes, as well as learn English and fulfill other requirements, to earn legal permanent residency and then citizenship after approximately a decade.

“People think that they’re trying to somehow shape a way to solve the immigration problem,” said King, who has made headlines by comparing immigrants to dogs.  ”Well, remember how you could simply solve the lawlessness problem if you abolish all the laws and you wouldn’t have the lawlessness problem anymore? That’s essentially what they are doing with this bill,” added King at the press conference.

“They have a Gang of Eight? We’re going to have a Gang of Millions,” added Texas Republican Congressman Steve Stockman, citing strong opposition to the Senate plan. Stockman said the immigration bill “will fail on its own merit — because the people are stronger than the Gang of Eight.”  Others at the press conference included  Pennsylvania Congressman Lou Barletta, Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, Louisiana Congressman John Fleming, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, and Texas Congressman Lamar Smith.

A bipartisan group of House members including Florida Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, Idaho Republican Raul Labrador, and Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez are expected to announce their own bipartisan immigration reform bill in the next few weeks.

UPDATE: In a statement sent to NBC Latino, Congressman King said the following about his previous comments comparing immigrants and bird dogs, which we linked to: “This was a speech given about legal, as opposed to illegal, immigrants who self select and are a source of American vigor, the cream of the crop and, yes, the self selected pick of the litter.”