2010 Immigration Reform Push

Laying out the administration's bottom line, Napolitano will argue for a ''three-legged stool'' that includes enacting tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them, and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a ''tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.''

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress wrestling with health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had started to doubt that President Obama would keep to his pledge to take on the divisive issue of illegal immigration in the first months of 2010.

Congress should be ready to move forward on immigration, Ms. Napolitano said, because the administration had made a ''fundamental change'' in security at the border and in cracking down on employers hiring illegal immigrants. She said that the Border Patrol had increased its forces by more than 20,000 officers, and that more than 600 miles of border fence had been completed, both milestones set by Congress.