By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

Majority Leader Bill Frist intends to seek Senate passage of immigration legislation by Memorial Day, hoping to revive a bill that tightens border security and gives millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, Republican leadership aides said Friday.

In a gesture to conservative critics of the measure, Frist and other Republicans also intend to seek roughly $2 billion in immediate additional spending for border protection.

By Geri Smith

Living south of the U.S. border can be a surreal experience. When I was in Tijuana recently trying to navigate a poorly marked main artery to return a rental car, I suddenly realized I was on the wrong side of the four-lane highway, heading toward San Diego instead of toward the Tijuana airport. Stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, I'd take at least an hour to get through the U.S. immigration checkpoint to turn around and come back to Mexico. I'd miss my flight.

esperate, I motioned to one of the dozens of street vendors swarming around the idling cars. "Is there a turnaround lane for people who're stuck here by mistake?" I asked. "No, you're out of luck," he said, lugging a 3-foot crucifix and leopard-print blanket for sale.

But a few minutes later, he came running back. "You're in luck!" he shouted. "There's a place up here where there's no fence and the curb is broken and you can do a U-turn."
Steady Flow. I won't say here whether I bent the traffic rules, but it occurred to me that the poorly designed border entrance is similar to our broken U.S. immigration policy. The U.S. doesn't have a sensible way to deal with the need for a steady flow of reliable workers to do jobs our citizens are no longer interested in performing.

As a result, millions of good, hard-working people end up breaking the law. And it's not just illegal immigrants who do so but also Americans whose businesses would fail without that willing workforce. We have a legal and ethical bottleneck that must be addressed -- quickly.

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer

The Senate's top Democrat asked Majority Leader Bill Frist on Wednesday to return to work on immigration legislation immediately after the Senate completes a bill with more money for military operations in Iraq and hurricane relief.

Congress is on a two-week recess and the Senate is scheduled to consider the war spending bill when it returns April 25.

Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a letter to Frist that the need for an immigration bill was highlighted by rallies across the nation this week protesting a House bill that would subject illegal immigrants to prosecution as felons.

Reid labeled as "confusing" Frist's position on a compromise put together by Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Mel Martinez, R-Fla., that collapsed last Friday after Democrats refused to allow votes on several amendments to it.

"I can only conclude that you had second thoughts about Hagel-Martinez after right-wing members of your caucus made known their strong opposition to it," Reid wrote.

Frist, R-Tenn., responded with a statement saying Reid "needs to stop clogging up the Senate with procedural gimmicks and let members have fair up and down votes on amendments"

"Every day he stalls, we are less safe and less secure," said Frist, who is on a congressional trip in Eastern Europe.