Reid pushes hard for S 1348
Reid pushes hard for S 1348
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 1:03 PM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1691 -- 5/15/2007 >>>>>
The comprehensive immigration bill in the Senate is moving very rapidly
towards some kind of conclusion. As early as tomorrow Sen. Harry Reid will
try to get cloture, which will stop debate on the bill and stop any other
amendments from being added.
The best case scenario is that Reid can't get cloture. If that happens,
debate could tie the bill up for at least a week. In either case, it's
unlikely that the SKIL bill will be removed. The most we can hope for is an
amendment to include the Durbin/Grassley bill.
Lost in most of the debate is the fact that S1348 contains the "SKIL Bill".
The long Washington Post article I included below illustrates how much
discussion is going on in Capitol Hill, and how little is said about the
SKIL bill. This destructive bill is being obscured by the debate about
amnesty and unskilled labor.
Perhaps the press and the public isn't paying attention but employers are.
Extensive lobbying is going on to insure employers that the immigration
bill provides ample supplies of farm workers and computer programmers.
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Roy Beck, NumbersUSA Alert
1. Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) filed for cloture Monday on S. 1348. That
bill is virtually the same as the S. 2611 amnesty that passed the Senate a
year ago. If Kyl and Kennedy don't come to an agreement this afternoon, it
looks like the Republicans (with the help of a handful of Democrats) will
get the 41 votes to kill S. 1348. But if Kyl and Kennedy DO come to an
agreement today, that new compromise bill will be substituted for the S.
2611 clone and the 60 necessary votes will be much more likely.
2. The "cloture" vote will be Wednesday on Rule 14. That is the rule that
allows a bill to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote without going
through the discussion, debate and amending of a committee. Because some
Senators have promised to filibuster the Rule 14, Reid will need 60
Senators voting YES on cloture (which means an end to debate on the rule)
to allow the debate on the actual bill to begin.
3. Our greatest hope is that Reid will fall short of the 60 votes.
4. If Reid gets the 60 votes, there will be several days of debate and
probably a lot of amendments.
5. Then, Reid will have to have another cloture vote to end debate and
allow a final vote on the amnesty, probably late next week.
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http://capwiz.com/caps/issues/alert/?alertid=9755246
Alert! Reid pushes hard on guestworker/amnesty bill, S 1348!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has introduced S 1348, an amnesty bill
very similar to S 2611 that passed the Senate last year. The Senate could
vote as early as Wednesday to proceed on this or a substitute amnesty bill!
If backroom negotiators reach agreement on a new bill, that language would
replace the existing language of S 1348. By all accounts, the new version
would include an amnesty. Negotiations are over other provisions,
especially chain migration.
The Wednesday vote would be on allowing the bill to receive a floor vote
without proceeding through the normal committee hearing process. It needs
60 votes.
ACTION NEEDED
Now is a crucial time for you to ask your Senators to reject amnesty. Send
a fax or e-mail by entering your ZIP Code and clicking "Go!" below. You may
also want to follow up with a phone call through the Congressional
Switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/businesses-lobbying-for-brain-brawn-2007-05-14.html
Businesses lobbying for brain, brawn
By Jim Snyder
May 15, 2007
Farm groups want to fix the labor shortages that hampered Western harvests
last year. Companies that rely on tourism want to ease restrictions on
international travel.
High-tech groups, meanwhile, are pushing hard to boost the availability of
visas for foreign workers to fill jobs in a domestic industry on the
rebound.
A broad array of business and other interest groups is lobbying for an
overhaul of immigration laws as the Senate prepares to start to debate the
issue this week.
But for lawmakers, a key question remains: Is immigration reform worth the
political risk?
"I dont see a clear path," said one lobbyist who supports comprehensive
immigration reform but requested anonymity in order to speak more freely.
"This is a tough issue for a lot of people."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has set a deadline this week to
start the debate on immigration reform. The placeholder bill is now the
measure that passed the Senate last year.
Further complicating the issue is the fact that the business groups that
generally support a broad overhaul -- rather than the enforcement-only
approach their traditional allies on the Hill, House Republicans, adopted
last Congress -- do not support reform at any cost.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others supported the Senate bill last year
as a counterweight to the House effort, which left untouched complicated
issues like what to do with the millions of undocumented workers in the
country or how many temporary workers to allow in.
The Senate bill was amended to allow 200,000 temporary workers in the
United States annually, but that is about half of what is needed, said
Randel Johnson, the Chambers immigration point person. Another concern
is that the employment-verification system will be too costly.
"There are still a lot of big issues outstanding," Johnson said.
With Democrats in charge in the House, the debate has moved from
enforcement to comprehensive reform. But the politics of the issue arent
any clearer.
Lobbyists said there remains reluctance to tackle the controversial issue,
particularly among the crop of freshman Democrats who represent districts
that lean conservative.
Mickey Ibarra, a former Clinton administration official who now lobbies for
National Council for La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, said a few
Democrats will likely vote against comprehensive immigration reform.
"You need to have a certain amount of Republican support," he said. "That
is a tricky dance."
Farm groups are among the biggest supporters of the effort. Craig
Regelbrugge, the co-chairman of the Agriculture
Coalition for Immigration Reform, said farms in the Southwest and on the
West Coast suffered worker shortages as high as 30 percent as enforcement
efforts of existing immigration laws were stepped up.
"Agriculture is teetering and vulnerable," Regelbrugge said. "The facts on
the ground are startling."
His group wants the bill to include provisions that would make it easier
for farm workers to come and work in the United States on a temporary basis
to meet the demand for farm labor, which is now met almost exclusively by
foreigners.
Regelbrugge admits that the vast majority of farm labor workers are in the
country illegally. But his group strongly supports providing them a path to
legal status -- what critics refer to as "amnesty."
Meanwhile, high-tech companies are lobbying on another hot-button issue:
They want to increase the number of H-1B visas available. There are 85,000
H-1B visas issued this year, but thats not enough to meet demand,
high-tech lobbyists
say. Critics argue that high-tech companies want cheaper foreign labor.
The Information Technology Industry Council wrote Senate leaders a letter
last week saying that the immigration bill should "streamline the path to
permanent residency for U.S.-educated students studying math and science,
provide critical relief with respect to the number of available H-1B and
employment-based visas, and reduce the backlog within the
employment-based Green Card system."
For their part, a group of hotel and entertainment chains is trying to add
fixes to the visa program to simplify international travel to the United
States.
Geoffrey Freeman, the executive director for the Discover America
Partnership, which include Marriott International, Anheuser-Busch, and Walt
Disney Parks and Resorts, said overseas travel to the United States has
dropped 20 percent since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when this
country adopted new visa standards.
That translates into $94 billion in lost spending, Freeman said, as more
and more business meetings and trade shows are held outside the United
States.
The groups legislative package, which runs more than 20 pages, calls for
extending visa-free travel privileges to countries that are aiding U.S.
efforts against terrorism. It also supports updating American visa services
to make the process more efficient and hiring more customs officials so
that arriving visitors dont have to wait in long lines.
"No wonder people dont want to come here when you have to wait in a
two-hour line to get through," Freeman said.
The consensus on K Street seems to lean against the immigration reform
measure ever reaching President Bushs desk. But optimists say that big,
complicated measures like this one often seem hopeless in part because of
political posturing before a compromise is worked out.
John Gay of the National Restaurant Association -- a group that supports
broad reform -- said he puts the bills chances at 50-50, but he called
the glass "half full."
Democrats, he said, ran against a do-nothing Republican Congress, and
immigration reform is a good chance for the new majority to distinguish
itself from the old one.
After just six months on the job, Juanita Duggan is out at the American
Forest and Paper Association.
Duggan took over as president and CEO of the trade group during a
reorganization begun by her predecessor, W. Henson
Moore, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. Duggan, who is also
a Republican, came over to the group from the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers
of America.
As the Forest and Paper Association reorganized, internal divisions
sprouted among its members over a particular tax on timber companies. Some
members supported the tax change, while others opposed it, which further
complicated Duggans job, sources said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902492.html?hpid=sec-politics
Reid Forces New Senate Debate on Immigration
He Would Revisit 2006, But GOP Is Warier Now
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 10, 2007; A04
With bipartisan talks on immigration near a standstill, Senate Majority
Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) moved yesterday to bring last year's broad
overhaul of immigration laws back to the floor of the Senate next week,
appealing to President Bush to save what could be his last hope for a major
second-term domestic achievement.
The legislation -- which couples a border security crackdown with a
guest-worker program and new avenues for undocumented immigrants to work
legally in the country -- passed the Senate a year ago this month with the
support of 62 members, 23 of them Republican, only to die in the House.
With Democrats now in control of Congress and with the president eager for
an accomplishment, immigrant rights groups believe the prospects for a
final deal are far better this year.
But Senate Republicans, even those who helped craft last year's bill, say
the political environment has shifted decisively against that measure and
toward a tougher approach. Four Republican architects of the 2006 bill
released a letter yesterday, pleading with Reid to hold off on the debate
while bipartisan talks continue on new legislation.
"Last year's bill is not the solution for this year," said Sen. Mel
Martinez (Fla.), one of those architects who is now general chairman of the
Republican Party.
But Reid decided to force the issue, devoting the Senate's next two weeks
to hammering out a comprehensive bill. If negotiators reach a deal on a new
proposal in the coming days, he promised to bring it to a vote. "There are
all kinds of excuses people could offer," Reid said. "But how can we have
anything that's more fair than taking a bill that overwhelmingly passed the
Senate on a bipartisan basis, and using that as the instrument" to build a
new version?
Immigration poses political peril for both parties. It has badly split
GOP-leaning business groups eager for immigrant labor from party-base
conservatives furious at what they see as an invasion of illegal
immigrants. Democrats must bridge a chasm between old-line labor groups
that fear that immigrant workers are driving down wages and burgeoning
service-worker unions that see low-wage workers as the backbone of a new
labor movement.
Both parties are battling for the allegiance of Latino voters. Indeed, Sen.
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered immigrant groups virtual veto power
over this year's bill.
"Unless the stakeholders are going to believe that it's worthy of their
support, no matter what we do here in the United States Senate, it isn't
going to work," he said.
And, this year, the issue is tangled in presidential politics. One White
House hopeful, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), has all but renounced a
career-long stance favorable to immigrant rights. And the co-author of last
year's bill, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has been largely absent from this
year's negotiations, as he soft-pedals his pro-immigration stance.
McCain spokeswoman Eileen McMenamin said yesterday that the senator remains
committed to a bill that would strengthen border controls, back guest
workers and offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
But Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said McCain's absence
from the negotiations has been "a big factor" in the rising tide of
Republican opposition. Another factor is a president whose authority on
Capitol Hill is in steep decline. "The president's approval ratings do not
exactly create a dynamic political force," Durbin said.
In that vacuum, Republican senators who opposed last year's bill have
emerged as key players in this year's battle, and they have already
succeeded in raising issues that were barely discussed in 2006. Sen. Jeff
Sessions (Ala.), an ardent opponent of last year's bill, said the measure
got only so many GOP votes because Republican senators expected the final
bill to be far tougher after emerging from negotiations with House GOP
hard-liners. With Democrats now in charge of the House, Senate Republicans
are taking a tougher stand, he said.
Senators are nearing agreement on some of the most contentious issues. Once
again, an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants would probably get new
avenues to find legal work and earn citizenship once they have established
a strong work record, cleared a criminal-background check, and paid
penalties and back taxes. Beefed-up border security would be linked to
tougher penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants and to new
tools for businesses to screen job applicants.
But Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided over the flow of new
immigrants. Republicans, with the White House's backing, are proposing a
three-year temporary-worker program that would allow 400,000 new workers to
enter the country each year, provided they return to their home countries
once their visas expire. A much smaller number, perhaps 20,000, would be
able to apply for a work visa that could lead to legal permanent residency.
Even more controversial is a GOP effort to change current laws that allow
legal U.S. residents to bring relatives into the country. Republicans want
to drop large categories from that family immigration system, blocking the
inflow of adult children and siblings of U.S. residents and capping the
number of parents allowed to migrate. That move would make room for more
skilled workers and educated professionals.
Last year's bill would have allowed guest workers to remain in the country
indefinitely and work toward citizenship.
With the divisions so deep, Republican Senate leadership aides privately
said that the bill is "on life support." Democrats were no more optimistic.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
said the fate of comprehensive immigration legislation rests with Bush.
"The president has got to be personally involved," Leahy said. "He cannot
just send up Cabinet members and ask them to speak with a few members of
the president's party and think that that's going to get you through."
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