U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who has been under intense pressure from the White House and Republican leadership to support a sweeping immigration overhaul, nevertheless announced today that she will vote against reviving the legislation when it returns to the Senate floor next week.

She was joined today by the state's other senator, Republican John Cornyn, who had been expected by the bill's supporters to take such a stance. They had aggressively lobbied Hutchison in hopes of adding her vote to the 60 necessary to revive the stalled legislation. "I could not support (bringing the bill to a vote) in its present position," Hutchison, criticizing the legislation as amnesty for illegal immigrants, said today.

As No. 4 in the Senate GOP leadership, Hutchison is the highest-ranking Republican to break from her party on a domestic policy issue of signal importance to President Bush. "Until major changes are made that reject amnesty and a more open, fair process emerges for debating one of the most crucial issues facing our nation, I cannot support this immigration bill," she said.

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The architects of the tenuous bipartisan immigration compromise, which twins increased border and interior enforcement with a path to eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, had given Hutchison a chance to propose an amendment in hopes of securing her support. But Hutchison acknowledged that her amendment, which would require most adult illegal immigrants to temporarily return home within two years of obtaining their visa, was unlikely to succeed.

Since 2005, the backlog of legal U.S. immigrants whose applications for naturalization and other benefits are stuck on hold awaiting FBI name checks has doubled to 329,160, prompting a flood of lawsuits in federal courts, bureaucratic finger-pointing in Washington and tough scrutiny by 2008 presidential candidates.

At a time when Congress is intensely focused on border security, the growing backlog is one of the most visible signs of the U.S. immigration system's breakdown, current and former government officials said.

Unexplained delays in determining whether longtime residents pose a threat promise neither justice to the applicants nor added security to the country, they said. They blame bureaucratic mismanagement and poor coordination at the FBI and the immigration service, and the inefficient methods of screening files for genuine security threats.

In his annual report to Congress last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ombudsman Prakash I. Khatri called the backlog of FBI name checks "unacceptable from the standpoint of national security and immigration benefits processing."

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Seong Ho Kang, 40, a computer engineer from South Korea who lives in Centreville, has waited for more than a year for his FBI check, possibly because the bureau since 2001 has intensified the scrutiny of immigrants with high-technology backgrounds. In frustration, Kang submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any records the FBI might have on him. The bureau promptly replied that it had none. "If they can tell that to me, why can't they tell it to immigration?" Kang asked.

Senate leaders announced plans Thursday night to revive the White House-backed measure as early as next week, although neither Majority Leader Harry Reid nor his GOP counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, issued any predictions the bill ultimately would pass.

Instead, they issued a statement that said in its entirety: "We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion" of sweeping energy legislation that has occupied the Senate this week.

There was no immediate reaction from the bill's numerous Senate critics, who have consistently attacked the legislation as conferring amnesty on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country. At the White House, spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "We are encouraged by the announcement from Senate leaders that comprehensive immigration reform will be brought back up for consideration."

The immigration legislation's revival represented at least an interim victory for President Bush, who returned home from Europe earlier in the week and plunged into a campaign to rescue his top domestic priority. On Tuesday, the president made a rare visit to the Capitol to ask Republican senators to give the bill a second chance. Two days later, responding to a request from pivotal GOP senators, he threw his support behind $4.4 billion in immediate funding for "securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site." As drafted, the legislation called for the money to become available over a period of several years.

Under a plan that key lawmakers presented to Reid and McConnell, Republicans and Democrats each will have 10-12 opportunities to amend the measure, with the hope that they will then combine to provide the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by die-hard opponents.

The Bush administration agreed Wednesday to greatly expand the number of Iraqi refugees allowed into the country and to pay more to help Iraq's Arab neighbors cope with the human tide fleeing increasing violence and economic hardship in their country. The decision to allow about 7,000 Iraqis to come to the United States answers mounting political and diplomatic pressure on the administration to do more to remedy the consequences of a war it largely started. Only 202 Iraqis were allowed in last year.

The administration also said it will immediately contribute $18 million for a worldwide resettlement and relief program. The United Nations has asked for $60 million from nations around the world. Although the United Nations estimates that 3.8 million Iraqis have fled their homes since the war began nearly four years ago, the United States has allowed only about 600 to settle in the United States. The U.S. proposal also includes plans to offer special treatment for Iraqis still in their country whose cooperation with the U.S. puts them at risk. Expanding visa programs for those Iraqis would require legislation in Congress, State Department Undersecretary Paula J. Dobriansky said Wednesday.

Some 2 million Iraqis have left their country, and an additional 1.8 million are believed to have relocated inside Iraq. The refugee flow has increased sharply as sectarian violence has increased over the past year. The numbers have overwhelmed the hospitality of Arab neighbors such as Syria and Jordan. The United Nations says most of those who have been uprooted have no desire to come to the United States, and want to return to their homes in Iraq when fighting stops. But allies, U.N. diplomats and lawmakers of both parties have recently told the administration that the small number of Iraqis the U.S. has allowed in looks miserly.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a hearing last week that the United States could bring in 7,000 Iraqis this year _ exactly the number announced Wednesday. The move is a step in the right direction, considering the United States is a "chief cause" of the refugee problem, said Carolyn Saour, an Iraqi-American Christian living in Houston. Still, 7,000 "is severely low for the amount of damage that's been done over the years," she said.

The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.

That vote, considered a defeat for immigration-rights advocates, was followed last night by an important victory: By 58 to 35, the Senate killed an amendment that would have blocked eventual citizenship for future immigrants who arrive under a temporary work permit. Democrats and Republicans agreed that the amendment would have destroyed the fragile, bipartisan coalition backing the Senate bill.

The Senate action came hours after President Bush, who visited the border town of Yuma, Ariz., asked Congress to approve a $1.95 billion budget request to deploy National Guard troops and 1,000 additional enforcement agents to the U.S.-Mexico border. Bush also endorsed for the first time the construction of 370 miles of southern border fences to cut down on illegal immigration.

The English language vote continued the conservative turn that a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws has taken since the Senate began debate this week. The comprehensive legislation would strengthen border security, allow illegal immigrants who have been in the country five years or more to remain and eventually become citizens, and create a guest-worker program.

The Bush administration has not released the guidelines that the N.S.A. uses in determining who is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and may be a target under the program. General Hayden said the determination was made by operational people at the agency and "must be signed off by a shift supervisor," with the process closely scrutinized by officials at the agency, the Justice Department and elsewhere.

But questions about the legal and operational oversight of the program last year prompted the administration to suspend aspects of it temporarily and put in place tighter restrictions on the procedures used to focus on suspects, said people with knowledge of the program. The judge who oversees the secret court that authorizes intelligence warrants - and which has been largely bypassed by the program - also raised concerns about aspects of the program.

To expose FBI monitoring of political and religious groups in the United States, the ACLU filed FOIAs in 20 states on behalf of over 150 organizations and individuals. Today the ACLU made public the latest documents obtained in the project which confirm that the FBI is using counterterrorism resources to monitor and infiltrate advocacy groups including PETA, Greenpeace, the American Arab Anti Defamation Committee the ACLU itself. www­.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23124prs20051220.html

"When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said, 'What's going on here?'" Bush said when asked about the new rules at an American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. "I thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic and people."

The president said he has instructed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and officials from the Department of Homeland Security to see if there is enough flexibility in the new policy to accommodate regular travelers, including truckers and tourists. Bush said one option might be electronic fingerprint imaging, "to serve as a so-called passport for daily traffic."

A senior U.S. government official involved in the policy change said Homeland Security and State Department officials had vetted the change exhaustively with the White House before announcing it. The officials said they always anticipated some changes would be needed.