Lawmakers want to revise key elements, such as letting millions of illegal immigrants stay in the U.S., favoring skills and education over families and setting out the terms of a new temporary worker program.

Any one of the changes has the potential to sink the whole measure, which was unveiled with fanfare Thursday but was still being drafted late Friday.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who helped negotiate the compromise, called it “very well-balanced,” and cautioned against revisions that could upset the framework.

“You take something out and you’re creating a problem throughout the system — you may think that you’re only tweaking one part,” Gutierrez said in an interview. “We’ve got to be very careful as to what is proposed to change.”

As the White House and proponents in both parties began laboring to sell the agreement to the public, interest groups launched elaborate efforts to alter major pieces of the complicated proposal.

“We’re going to fight like mad to fix the parts we don’t like,” said Tom Snyder, the national political director of UNITE HERE!, a service workers labor union comprised largely of immigrants.

Senate leaders huddled privately to plot strategy for next week’s debate, which is likely to feature Democratic efforts to kill or substantially shrink the temporary worker program and Republican attempts to prevent illegal immigrants from staying indefinitely in the U.S. without applying for permanent residency or citizenship.

Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he does not know whether the measure can make it through the Senate.

Liberal activists who call the measure a good start but object to major parts have “a couple of bites at the apple” to change it as it makes its way to President George W. Bush’s desk, said Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

“It’s been hatched in the backroom at the eleventh hour; it’s now going to be debated in the light of day,” Sharry said.

If they do not succeed in reshaping it, the groups that have been among the strongest proponents of an immigration overhaul might desert the deal.

“We’re not sure that our support for moving forward will continue to be support if the bill that approaches the finish line has these kind of problems in it,” said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza.

There is broad agreement on some elements of the plan, such as improving border security and workplace enforcement and allowing some way for the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants to earn a path to citizenship.

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