Lawmakers' personal stories pushed immigration bill

The personal narratives of lawmakers whose parents and grandparents came to the United States from elsewhere were a key factor pushing the US Senate to reach its hard-fought compromise on immigration reform.

In the case of Republican Senator Mel Martinez, it was not a distant forebear, but he himself who arrived in the United States from another country.

Cuban-born Martinez, who helped to craft the key breakthrough compromise that Democrats and Republicans signed on to Thursday after days of stalemate, said he has been helped in the debate by his perspective as an immigrant.

Martinez who arrived in Florida as a teenage refugee from Fidel Castro's Cuba, said it was "my own voyage as an an American" which "touched my life very deeply and very profoundly" and shaped his views on the larger immigration issue.

"Not having been born in this country, but then moving on to citizenship, I understand the plight of immigrants," he said at a press conference Thursday.

"I understand what this has been about. I also understand about the rule of law, and I respect that," he said.

"I'm just immensely pleased for the potential outcome that we can have here and how much good it's going to do -- not just for a lot of people who desperately want to see this happen, but also for ... the good of bringing this country together, of pulling us all together, allowing all Americans and all who want to be Americans to join in the American dream."

Another Republican senator, Pete Domenici, recounted at the same press conference how the deportation to Italy of his illegal immigrant mother when he was a young child permanently shaped his views on the debate.

"I had a real-life experience with reference to living in a family with an illegal alien who was my mother," he told reporters.

"It turned out that was unknown to all of us, because we didn't know that she was an illegal alien. But we lived through many years of her life, and then she was arrested in the Second World War as an illegal alien of Italian descent," he said.

"So I understand how all of this works in terms of a family and family roots, and what I see in this bill is an opportunity to offer to those illegal aliens in our country something that they can say is good enough for them to come out from their hiding places and say, 'We're going to trust America and once again see if America will let us seek our dream'."

Domenici, who represents the southwestern state of New Mexico, added that he is convinced that the bill does right by the most of the estimated 12 million undocumented residents living in the United States.

"If this is not a good enough offer to get them to put up their hands and say 'yes,' then we have failed. But I think it is," he said.

"I think they are going to look at it and say, 'America has offered us something worthwhile," and they're going to join.

That's what's important, I think," Domenici said.