The second group to receive a path to legal permanent residence would be immigrants who have either a family or an employment relationship that would allow them to apply for legal status, except that they have already entered the country illegally. Currently, most of those immigrants would have to return to their home country for either 3 or 10 years before they would be eligible to reapply.

The House bill would most likely relax or waive those barriers. Immigrants would then have to return to their home country to apply for legal status, aides said, but could do so only after completing a series of hurdles including paying fines and back taxes and learning English, aides said.

The remaining illegal immigrants could apply for “provisional legal status” if they came forward and admitted breaking the law, paid fines and back taxes, and learned English, much as they could under the Senate plan, aides said. This status would allow them to live, work and travel in the country legally, and they could then apply through regular channels for a green card after 10 years and citizenship 5 years after that.

This comprise seems to mollify both sides: Republicans could reassure their base that illegal immigrants would not receive a special path to citizenship, while Democrats are satisfied because the plan would allow for the option of citizenship down the road.

A Democrat in the House group, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois, wrote last month in The Orange County Register: “It seems that the Republican bottom line when it comes to how to legalize undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is that we do not create a ‘new special path to citizenship’ for only undocumented immigrants outside the paths we make available to all immigrants.”