Backers and opponents of comprehensive immigration reform are still holding their breath to see the exact details of bipartisan legislation from House and Senate working groups, but the wait has made one thing clear: Everyone with a dog in the fight is more than ready to make their case once the bill makes its public debut.

Comprehensive immigration reform is complicated, with myriad issues to be untangled by lawmakers and their legislative policy staffers, who have been working behind closed doors for weeks. Numerous self-imposed deadlines for the group have slipped as they hash out thorny details, but lawmakers now say that they expect to roll out a bill by early next week.

Some questions the legislation will have to answer are obvious: What do we do with 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country, and what penalties should they have to pay for breaking the law? How can we ensure that new immigrants bolster the economy without increasing unemployment for American workers? What does a “secure border” really mean?

Other issues may sound minor, but could mean the world to an individual who dreams of becoming a legal U.S. resident. Should we allow the brothers and sisters of current U.S. citizens to apply for green cards based on their family relationships? Should an undocumented seasonal agricultural worker be able to work his or her way to faster citizenship by spending a certain amount of time performing a high-demand job?

Each of these questions brings with it an army of lobbyists and Capitol Hill wonks. To understand the legislation that may eventually pass, you don’t necessarily need to understand each one, but here’s an overview of the arguments each side is dealing with for and against a comprehensive immigration reform bill:

PRO
The economic argument: Disputes about the potential economic impact of an immigration bill were one of the main reasons that similar negotiations fell apart in 2007. But this time, the Chamber of Commerce and labor unions have struck a deal on temporary workers, and business groups are eagerly lobbying for measures that would allow more highly skilled foreign workers to seek employment in the United States. While there’s no consensus about how the legalization of undocumented immigrants will affect the overall economy, one recent study from a Republican group estimated that reform could raise economic growth by a percentage point, raise GDP by $1,500 per person and reduce the deficit by $2.5 trillion.

Larry Downing / REUTERS

Latinos rally in favor of comprehensive immigration reform on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 10, 2013.

The faith argument: Conservative and liberal religious organizations are joining pro-reform groups by getting in the game on the issue of family visas, saying that it’s unfair to make it difficult for family members of legal residents to join their families in America. Many faith groups, including the Evangelical Immigration Table, cite the Bible’s Matthew 25:35, which reads: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Inhumane treatment of immigrants, these groups say, amounts to mistreatment of “a stranger” as embodied by Christ.

The social justice argument: Pro-reform groups argue that humane and fair treatment of those in the country illegally is simply the right thing to do, saying that undocumented workers are often subject to exploitation and stifling fear of deportation. Like pro-reform faith groups, they also argue that family unification is important and shouldn’t be sacrificed in favor of more employment-based visas. Unions, LGBT organizations and groups like the NAACP are on board with the reform effort, saying they identify legalization for the undocumented as part of the larger fight for universal civil rights.

The political argument: With a few exceptions, the brain trusts of both parties see it in their interest to create some kind of path to citizenship. Latino and Asian immigrants -- both growing demographic groups in the United States -- make up a substantial chunk of the Democratic coalition, and Republicans note that their last presidential candidate won only 27 percent of the Latino vote. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Thursday showed that 55 percent of Latino adults strongly favor a path to citizenship.

CON
The economic argument: Fiscal hawks worry that the immediate impact of having more legalized residents could drain the nation’s resources. Conservatives on the Senate budget panel argue that the newly legal individuals will use up costly federal benefits; others say that even with wage protections negotiated by unions, temporary immigrant labor will lower wages for American workers and will keep those currently unemployed or underemployed unable to succeed in the job market. The Heritage Foundation, a premiere conservative think tank in Washington, is expected to release a lengthy report in the coming weeks about the impact of comprehensive immigration reform that will likely support those claims.

The Rule of Law argument: Many Republican opponents center on the Rule of Law argument, which holds that those who have entered the country illegally have broken the law and should not be rewarded for their actions with a path to citizenship. Proponents of that argument believe these individuals should return to their home country and apply for a visa through existing channels. They also argue that a path to legalization will incentivize more illegal immigration to the country. Some point to a 1986 bill, backed by President Ronald Reagan, which offered amnesty for immigrants who entered the country before 1982. Despite promises of tough enforcement measures, that bill is now viewed as a failure that prompted a wave of fraud and a surge of illegal immigration.

The political argument: Some conservatively aligned groups grumble that even if immigration reform passes, the majority of the votes against it will still be from Republicans, making Latino voters no more likely to embrace conservative candidates. They argue that new immigrants are naturally ideologically aligned with liberals; more legalization, these political thinkers say, just means more votes for Democrats in future elections.  

The process argument: While lawmakers who are likely to ultimately oppose the bill usually cite the above arguments, they often do so within the framework of the legislative process. Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, have needled Democratic Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont for failing to schedule sufficient hearings on the matter. (Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did the same, leading Leahy to lengthen the process during which the panel will consider the bill, but Sessions says the current plan is still not thorough enough.) Opponents of reform, often citing Obama’s lengthy health-care bill, say that insufficient review of the legislation could be disastrous and that “months” of consideration will be needed. They will also fight for amendments to the bill, which Leahy has assured will be allowed but may face nearly united opposition from the bill’s proponents.

Related:

Glossary of terms used in immigration debate

Why immigration reform has a better chance than guns

By the numbers: How America tallies its 11.1 million undocumented immigrants

The proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget which President Barack Obama unveiled Wednesday would raise taxes for some Americans, not all of them upper-income earners, while awarding tax breaks to particular groups and interests such as college students, people who don’t save for retirement, and investors in low-income neighborhoods.

What’s most notable in the Obama plan is that despite much talk from the Simpson-Bowles commission and from other reformers of simplifying the tax code, Obama would, if Congress passed his plan, still be very much in the business of using the tax code to try to fine-tune the economy and engineer certain policy outcomes.

This targeted tax break approach seems exactly opposed to the tax reform effort that the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees are planning later this year.

Under his plan – which covers the next 10 years – tax revenues would be nearly $1 trillion higher than the baseline current-law forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. Much of that additional revenue would come from tax increases he is proposing.

The president seeks to increase taxes by far more than the $600 billion tax increase in the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) of 2012 which he signed into law on Jan 2.

He would get the $580 billion by reducing certain tax preferences for upper-income earners. He would limit the value of itemized deductions to 28 percent for families in the highest tax brackets – an idea he offered in his very first budget proposal back in 2009.

Among the other tax increases Obama proposes:

• A new “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” imposed on large banks and financial institutions, a kind of retroactive charge five years after the 2008 bailout of the financial sector. The fee is intended “to fully compensate taxpayers for the support they provided to the financial sector during the 2008–2009 economic crisis and to discourage excessive risk-taking” in the future, the president’s budget document says. If enacted, this targeted financial sector tax would raise nearly $60 billion, budget officials say.
• An increase in the estate and gift tax of nearly $72 billion. This was an issue Congress thought it had settled when it passed ATRA at the end of 2012.
• $78 billion in increased taxes on cigarettes and tobacco products.
• $44 billion in tax increases on oil, natural gas and coal producers by eliminating certain tax breaks for those industries.
• $10.7 billion from indexing all tax penalties to the inflation rate.
• $9.3 billion from limiting the amount of money that higher-income people could put in tax-sheltered retirement accounts.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

A staff member prepares the release and distribution of President Barack Obama's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget at the Government Printing Office in Washington April 10, 2013.

Many of these tax increases can be seen as part of an ongoing project by the president to shift more of the burden of paying for government and especially entitlement programs to upper-income Americans, both retirees and the currently employed.

In the same vein, the president again offered certain Medicare ideas he'd included in his budget plan last year: $68 billion in higher premiums, co-payments and surcharges for mostly higher-income Medicare recipients.

He’d get another $120 billion or so in revenue by tweaking the inflation indexing formula used to set the levels for the tax brackets, the standard deduction, and other provisions in tax law.

But on the other hand Obama also proposes an array of new tax breaks.

For example, he seeks:

• A 10 percent tax credit for small businesses that hire new employees or increase wages. This would cost $25.7 billion in lost revenue.
• Creation of tax-preferred "Promise Zones” in high-poverty communities which would provide tax breaks for hiring workers and investing within the zones, an idea somewhat reminiscent of former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp's Urban Enterprise Zones. This would cost $5.3 billion in lost revenue.
• A new tax-preferred bond program called America Fast Forward Bonds, at a cost of $10 billion, for public school construction.
• A new tax credit to encourage employers to offer retirement savings plans and to automatically enroll workers in them. Cost: $17.6 billion.

Obama’s proposal also makes some assumptions about future spending that might not turn out to be realistic: for example, it forecasts nearly $1.8 trillion in savings from overseas military operations that it assumes will not take place during the next 10 years.

The Obama blueprint isn’t likely to be adopted, but some of its specific proposals might be, if the president can use his persuasive power to bring Republican members of Congress to accept at least some of his new tax increases.

The initial response from GOP leaders was at best tepid.

“The document headed our way does not appear designed to bridge the differences between the House- and Senate-passed budgets. That’s the role Americans would expect the president to play at this stage,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Lobbyists and activists in Washington, D.C., are holding their collective breath this week as they await legislative language on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that has largely been negotiated behind closed doors.

But hints of the bill’s proposals already have religious organizations and other pro-reform groups publicly signaling that they will fight possible reductions in visas available to foreign-born family members of U.S. citizens.

Activists fear that the bipartisan Gang of Eight proposal may seek to eliminate two categories of family-based visas – those available to the siblings and to the married adult children of U.S. citizens – in order to shift more visas to immigrants linked to employers.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key member of the Gang of Eight, said that a primary goal of the legislation would be to “turn our chain migration, family-based immigration system into a merit- based immigration system with a family component.”

While it’s not yet apparent exactly how Graham’s statement will translate in the draft legislation, proponents of family-based visas -- like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Latino and Asian pro-reform groups -- are making the argument that eliminating those visa categories would break apart families and undermine support structures for new immigrants.

“We’re very concerned about what we’re hearing,” says Mee Moua, the president of the Asian American Justice Center, which is lobbying Congress to maintain the existing family visa categories.

“The elimination of any of the categories, particularly the sibling or married children categories, is going to have a disproportionate impact on the Asian American community, in addition to the Latino community and the African-Caribbean community as we’re striving to allow those groups to reunite with their families," she said.

Those who believe family visas should be limited say that current family preference levels mean that there are too few slots for the immigrants most likely to boost the American economy.

“We are not bringing in skilled immigrants in sufficient numbers to meet our needs and to maximize future American prosperity,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wrote in his new book on immigration reform. “Unlike every other country, in America family members of existing immigrants account for a large majority of new lawful entrants into our country, crowding out most others, including immigrants who would contribute greatly to economic growth.”

Bush is correct that the majority of new legal permanent residents are here because of family ties. The federal government estimates that in 2011, nearly 65 percent of the one million new legal permanent residents of the United States received their status based on a family relationship.

But proponents of maintaining family-based visa categories counter that Bush’s call to balance between “economic” and “family” visas oversimplifies the debate.

“There’s the idea that we grant family visas to be nice and we grant employment visas to be strategic,” says Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration for the National Council of La Raza. “That’s a completely false premise.”

Martinez de Castro and others argue that immigrants who come to the United States as the sibling or child of a citizen are no less likely to contribute positively to the economy than those who come for work. (Proponents point to Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Google co-founder Sergey Brin as examples of job creators who emigrated to America because of family ties.)

“Immigrant families are not potted plants,” said Kevin Appleby, director of the office of migration at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “They work, and they are economic actors as well.”

Appleby was joined on the conference call by other religious leaders and by AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka.

“Some are trying to pit economic interests against family,” said Trumka. “They say that ‘on merit’ brothers and sisters and children and spouses are worth less than people employers  prefer. The labor movement doesn’t buy that for one second.”

Currently, immigration law places no caps on visas for the foreign-born spouses,  minor children and parents (for those over 21) of current U.S. citizens. But the number of visas available for the married adult children of U.S. citizens is capped at 23,400 per year, and those for the siblings of citizens are limited at 65,000 annually. The immediate families of legal permanent residents also face visa caps.

Because of high demand and statutory limitations on the volume of new immigrants from individual countries, family members who have petitioned for visas are also subject to years-long backlogs.

The State Department estimated last year that 4.4 million individuals whose visa petitions had been approved were still awaiting an open slot for permanent legal residence; all but 3 percent of those were family-based visa petitioners.

Wait times can stretch years and even decades. A sibling of a U.S. citizen attempting to emigrate from the Philippines, for example, would have needed to file a visa petition in 1989 to be eligible to apply for a green card today.

Activists believe the backlogs for approved legal immigrants will be addressed thoroughly in the coming legislation.

“There is a recognition that some of these people have been waiting an inhumane length of time,” said Moua. “There is an attempt to meaningfully address this category of people.”

While they are less optimistic on the family visa issue, pro-reform groups are hopeful that their efforts to lobby to reinstate any eliminated visa categories will be effective as the legislation works its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee and to the Senate floor.

“This is the first inning of a nine-inning game,” Appleby said. “We will have many bites of the apple.”

DAILY RUNDOWN: President Barack Obama was greeted by a crowd in Ramallah Thursday, as only the third sitting president to visit Palestinian territories. The Daily Rundown's guest host Chris Cillizza reports.

TODAY: Just 24 hours after President Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, welcomed the president to Ramallah, in their first meeting in over a year. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

MITCHELL REPORTS: Meet the Press moderator David Gregory and Dana Weiss, host of Israel's Meet the Press, explain whether President Barack Obama's speech showed a new approach to talking about the peace process. 

NIGHTLY NEWS:During a press conference Wednesday in Israel only two questions were permitted from American journalists, prompting the President to call out correspondent Chuck Todd on his multi-part question. NBC's Brian Williams reports. 

MITCHELL REPORTS: The House of Representatives has passed the extension of the US debt limit to May 19 with a vote of 285 to 144. The measure moves on to the Senate for final passage. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell reports. 

MORNING JOE: The House is expected to vote on suspending the debt ceiling through May. How does this move put pressure on the Democrats? What does the House Speaker want from Senate Democrats? The Morning Joe panel – including Mike Barnicle, Time's Mark Halperin, former RNC Chair Michael Steele, NBC News' Kelly O'Donnell and the Huffington Post's Sam Stein -- discusses.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday that she backs President Barack Obama's newest proposal to avert the fiscal cliff, defying some progressive Democrats who object to an included cost-of-living calculation that could effectively cut entitlement benefits to Social Security recipients.

Asked by NBC's Andrea Mitchell if she believes she can rally enough Democratic support to pass the White House's plan, Pelosi responded "Yes, I do."

"I believe the president has demonstrated great leadership in what he put forth," she said, arguing that the White House plan would help avert the cliff, create consumer confidence and avoid a credit rating downgrade.

Pelosi pushed back on progressive opponents of one compromise measure that would modify the way cost-of-living increases are calculated to determine Society Security payments. While some in the Democratic Party say that the change -- called "chained CPI" --  would effectively cut Social Security payments, the minority leader said Tuesday that the effects on poor recipients would be minimal once all of the specifics of the deal are worked out.

"The details of this are not all ironed out, but they all mitigate for helping the poorest and neediest in our society, whether they are [Supplemental Security Income] recipients, whether they're 80 and older, or whether they're truly needy," she said.

But, she added, she would join some of those progressive Democrats in opposing an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks to reporters in the Capitol in Washington December 13, 2012.

Pelosi also came out against House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" proposal earlier Tuesday to push a standalone measure that would address tax rates for earners under $1 million.

"Plan B, I would call it 'Plan Befuddled," she said of Boehner's suggestion, adding that the measure cannot pass both houses of Congress.

'It's a tactic, but it's not a serious proposal," she said.

Republicans have pointed out that Pelosi herself suggested in May that tax rates should be maintained for all earners under $1 million, the same threshold that Boehner offered today.

Pelosi said Tuesday that her own proposal was in part a way to "smoke out" the opposition in getting Republicans to agree to at least some rate hikes, a move that they have now made in -- Pelosi argues -- a victory for the president.

"I'm glad he's taking up some of my suggestions," she said of Boehner. 'My next suggestion would be to put something on the table - as we were suggesting then to smoke out the Republicans - at what level would you raise the rates on the wealthiest people in this country? Not 'would you raise them at a million dollars?' That was the point of that exercise."

Arlen Specter was an American original – a tough, scrappy and independent political leader.  He was willing to anger people on all sides and was fiercely competitive, whether in the cloakroom or on the squash court.  He was, at times, criticized for being opportunistic. His character and personality were shaped by a hardscrabble upbringing in Kansas, where his family was one of the few Jewish families. As a teenager in Russell, Kansas, he got to know another future senator and American original: Bob Dole.

Matt Rourke / AP

In this Monday, March 29, 2010, file photo, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., leads a Senate field hearing, in Philadelphia.

I covered him for many years, from the time I started as a local radio reporter after graduating college in Philadelphia. That relationship came full circle a few weeks ago, when Specter, near the end of his life after defying the odds in multiple battles with cancer and other illnesses, reached out to me through an aide to do one last interview.

Why? He wanted to talk about the importance of funding the National Institutes of Health. Knowing he did not have much longer to live, Specter wanted his legacy to be his record of expanding resources for the NIH, the government agency he felt had extended his life and saved countless others. As a key Senate appropriator for decades, he was a fierce advocate for stem cell research, breast cancer funding and funding for Alzheimer's research.  But despite his hopes, he wasn't strong enough to do the interview. His family wanted him to conserve his energy.

The veteran senator first entered politics as a Democrat, working as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, where he'd been an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, before going to Yale Law School. After helping develop the "single-bullet theory" while assistant counsel to the Warren Commission - which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in  the assassination of John F. Kennedy - Specter returned to Philadelphia and switched parties.

A newly-minted Republican, Specter ran against his  former boss, Democratic District Attorney James Crumlish in 1965 - Crumlish tagged him "Benedict Arlen." But Specter won despite an overwhelming Democratic registration edge. He went on to fashion himself a crusading prosecutor against the city's Democratic machine, convening multiple grand juries to go after Democratic office-holders.

I first covered his race for mayor in 1967: he barely lost, by about 10,000 votes. He was re-elected as DA in 1969 by an overwhelming majority, but lost re-election in 1973.  When he finally was elected to the Senate - after losing statewide races for Senate and governor - Specter managed to anger both liberals and conservatives.

First, his leadership on the Judiciary Committee against confirmation of Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork earned him the lifetime enmity of conservatives.  Then, during the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, he angered liberals with his sharp cross-examination of Anita Hill. Criticism from women's groups jeopardized his re-election in the 1992 campaign, but a key political commercial taped by Teresa Heinz, the just-widowed wife of Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz, helped him regain enough women's support to win that campaign. (Mrs. Heinz subsequently met and married John Kerry). 

Back in the Senate - Specter was the leader of the coalition that defeated President Bill Clinton's health care legislation - with the use of complicated charts and graphs during a celebrated floor speech ridiculing the plan's complexity. But in 2009, he became the critical vote that helped President Obama win his stimulus package. That vote led to his party switch, one that did not help him survive a fiercely fought Democratic primary the following year. 

After his defeat Specter taught at Penn's Law School - until he succumbed to his final illness.

After a five-week August recess, Congress is back but will real work get done? Politico's Jonathan Martin discusses. 

Michael Steele, Ed Rendell and Vin Weber join Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss the key issues regarding the upcoming Republican National Convention. 

NBC's Chuck Todd and the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza share details from the NBC News/ WSJ poll.