One day before President Obama was set to give a speech about immigration, a bipartisan group of senators—Democrats Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Michael Bennet, and Bob Menendez, along with Republicans John McCain, Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake, and Lindsay Graham—introduced an immigration reform plan in a press conference. The New York Times reports:

The group described four main pillars: border enforcement, employer enforcement, the handling of the flow of legal immigration (including temporary agricultural workers and high-skilled engineers) and a pathway to citizenship for those who entered the nation illegally. Mr. McCain called the pathway to citizenship the “most controversial piece of immigration reform,” saying that the current situation amounts to “de facto amnesty” and that the illegal immigrants deserve a chance to live legally in the country and ultimately become citizens.
...
Mr. Schumer said that he and Mr. Durbin spoke Sunday evening with President Obama, who plans to deliver his own speech on immigration Tuesday in Nevada, and that “he couldn’t be more pleased.”

It'll be interesting to see how President Obama talks about this tomorrow. Unless something goes terribly wrong, this reform will be the one piece of proof Marco Rubio will present in his 2016 presidential campaign that he can reach across the aisle and get something done with the Democrats. It remains to be seen how Republicans who don't have to appeal to non-whites in 2016, which is to say every Republican not running for president, will handle this. The National Review seems unimpressed.

Meanwhile, all but nine Republicans rejected the Sandy relief bill in the Senate. The bill passed anyway.