By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- With Korean drums and cymbals keeping rhythm, a thousand or more people chanted in Spanish, "Si, se puede," or "Yes, we can," as several hundred clergy participated in an interfaith prayer service March 27, asking for God's guidance on Senate deliberations on immigration legislation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee answered most of the prayers, for the time being, anyway. The committee voted 12-6 to send the full Senate a bill that would give the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country a chance to legalize their status and would provide 1.5 million temporary visas to agricultural workers in a new guest worker program. Another 400,000 "green cards" or permanent resident visas would be available to people in various industries.

The bill would double the size of the Border Patrol and provide more funds for high-tech equipment to monitor the border.

The Senate began debate on the bill the next day. Floor discussion was expected to take two weeks before the Senate votes.

Whatever the final Senate bill looks like, it will need to be reconciled with legislation passed in the House in December that deals only with enforcement-related issues. Even in their approval of enforcement provisions, the Senate committee rejected many elements included in the House bill.

The committee refused to adopt amendments like those in the House bill that would make it a crime to be in the United States illegally or to provide assistance to undocumented immigrants. Illegal immigration currently is a violation of civil law. Religious organizations are among the most vocal opponents of those provisions in the House bill.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., repeatedly questioned whether proposed amendments to criminalize aiding illegal immigrants would create problems for a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, which takes in women and children regardless of their legal status.

One of several amendments proposed by Sens. John Kyl, R-Ariz., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, would have required anyone who provides humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants to register first with the federal government.

"You'd be asking every religious organization, humanitarian organization, every employee, every volunteer to be certified by the Department of Homeland Security before they can serve soup at a domestic abuse shelter," Durbin suggested.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said while he understood the motives for ensuring that nobody uses the "religious setting" for criminal purposes, such as a front for human smugglers, "we have laws on that already. The criminal statutes already cover that."

Four Republican members, including chairman Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, joined committee Democrats in approving most parts of the legislation individually and in the final vote on the whole bill. The finished version closely mirrors most of a proposal by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., which had the support of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and dozens of other religious, immigrants' rights, business and union groups.

While the committee hammered out those details, busloads of people from as far away as California gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol, carrying signs, singing and praying along with an assortment of interfaith clergy.

The service began with a Jewish cantor leading a chorus of the 1960s protest song, "If I Had a Hammer," followed by the Latin American folk song, "De Colores," and a version of the African-American spiritual, "Go Down Moses," rewritten to make the refrain "Let our people stay," instead of its traditional lyric, "Let my people go."

Father Rudy Juarez of Iowa City, Iowa, summed up the concerns expressed in the songs as well as on signs and T-shirts worn by participants in the event.

"All of us want the immigration laws of the land to reflect a compassion and heart of the nation," Father Juarez said, speaking to the crowd.

"We are here and we're not leaving," people chanted at one point.

"We are all God's children" read some signs. Others said, "No second-class citizens," "I am not a criminal," "Welcome the stranger" and "God's love has no borders."

Abigail Gonzalez came on a bus from Chicago with her mother and other friends and neighbors to join the prayer service.

"I believe we need to support the immigrants," said Gonzalez, whose father came legally to the United States from Mexico, but via Canada, which was an easier legal route during the 1970s.

Linda Ramirez Sliwinski said her father was an illegal immigrant for 30 years before he finally became a citizen. "That's when I first got involved in the whole process and learned how it really works," she said.

About 100 of the clergy symbolically attached themselves to handcuffs and processed up the hill to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where the Judiciary Committee was in session.

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops