"Home districts are boiling over right now," said Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which opposes the legislation. "Efforts will intensify over the next few weeks."

Utah business leaders took their case to Washington last week, as the Salt Lake Chamber met with Utah's delegation, arguing inaction on immigration is crippling their businesses.

They urged members to help solve the problem.

"The business community is tired of waiting for Congress to do anything," said Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes, the state's largest homebuilder. "They continue to get pressured by the extremists and they don't realize the majority and middle wants something to be done."

The Senate started debate last week on a compromise immigration bill, hammered out in extensive bipartisan negotiations, but it quickly became a target for members of Congress and advocates from both sides.

Rep. Rob Bishop's office has, in recent days, seen an increase in calls on the issue, almost all from people opposed to the Senate bill.

In a key vote Thursday, an effort to strip out earned residency provisions - critics call them "amnesty" - failed, with Utah Sen. Bob Bennett voting against removing the language; Sen. Orrin Hatch did not vote due to a family emergency.

"I know there are a lot of people who don't like it in its present form and frankly we're hearing from them," said Bennett.

But he says he also believes there is a silent majority of Americans who are not speaking up about the bill.

A CBS/New York Times poll released last week showed two-thirds of Americans support implementing a guest worker program and allowing those here illegally to earn a renewable visa if they pay a fine and pass a background check. Only one-third support deporting illegal immigrants who have been in the country for more than two years.

Speaking to reporters last week, President Bush said his administration had beefed up border enforcement, apprehending more than a million people entering the country, but more is needed.

"I strongly believe the bipartisan Senate bill addresses the reasons for past failures, while recognizing the legitimate needs of our economy, and upholding the ideals of our immigrant tradition," Bush said. "Immigration reform is a complex issue; it's a difficult piece of legislation. And those who are looking to find fault with this bill will always be able to find something."

The need for immigration reform is particularly acute in Utah, Ivory said, where unemployment is hovering around 2.5 percent, well below the national average.

Limitations on guest worker and temporary worker visas have caused problems for numerous Utah businesses, according to the chamber. For example:

* A Utah ski resort normally hires seasonal workers from overseas, but was unable to get guest worker visas, forcing the workers to return home and leaving the resort short-staffed.

* A Utah aeronautical manufacturing plant tried for two years to get a visa for a space engineer from the United Kingdom, delaying its production schedule.

* A Utah homebuilder wants to hire an artistic director from Europe to handle artistic development of its homes but has been unable to get a visa and the project is in limbo.

* Earlier, Utah ranchers were among a group in Washington pushing for an expanded visa program for agricultural workers. "What we want is a legal work force," said Doug Rowley, a Santaquin cherry farmer. "That's what every farmer in this country wants. Someone we can count on to come in" and help with the harvest.

"We do need to have some type of temporary worker program that is practical in its application," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. "We don't have it now. We have a labor shortage in Utah right now, quite frankly."

Matheson said the business community needs to be more engaged in the discussion to explain how both high- and low-skilled industries are suffering under the current system.

"There's a lot of rhetoric and a lot of emotion in this and we need to take a step back," he said. "We need more and more people who can talk about how the current system is harming our economy and our quality of life."

To Dane, of the federation opposing the legislation, it comes back to one thing: "It's a sellout to the special interests who simply want cheap labor."

"There is a sense of entitlement by American businesses that the federal government is one huge personnel firm," with the federal government providing cheap staffing and taxpayers subsidizing it, he said.

The result is that it drives down wages for unskilled American workers, he said. "How do you compete with someone who is satisfied with a third-world wage?"

But Bennett says those who say the bill isn't perfect should consider the alternative.

"Number 1, do we have a problem and the answer is clearly yes. We have a large immigration problem. Number 2, will this bill make the problem any better? . . . and I think the answer to that is yes," he says. "Number 3, if you don't pass this bill, will things get better? And I think the answer to that is clearly no."