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    Immigration agreement ‘very close’ in Congress; guest workers still a hurdle

    Immigration agreement ‘very close’ in Congress; guest workers still a hurdle

    By Seth McLaughlin
    The Washington Times
    March 27, 2013



    Members of the “Gang of Eight” tasked with carving out a comprehensive immigration package said Wednesday that they hope to file a bill when they return to Washington from their Easter break, and suggested that they are on the verge of a deal between business and labor leaders on visas for low-skilled workers.

    The high-profile immigration talks stalled out last week when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO failed to agree on the details of a proposed guest-worker program, a snag that has bogged down ongoing negotiations.


    But after touring the border on Wednesday, Democrats Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Michael F. Bennet of Colorado, as well as Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Arizona Republicans, sounded optimistic about their chances of filing a bill next month.

    “Bottom line, we’re very close,” Mr. Schumer told reporters. “I’d say we’re 90 percent there. We have a few little problems, we’ve been on the phone all day with our four other colleagues.”


    The group also includes Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

    They are working to convince the public and lawmakers to get on board with their plan, which grants a legal status to the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants on Day One, but requires the border be deemed secure before anybody living here illegally gets a pathway to citizenship.

    The biggest hurdle, though, has been bridging the divide between business and labor leaders over the details of how best to revamp the nation’s guest-worker program — a fight that also helped derail comprehensive immigration reform in 2007.

    The senators had hoped to hammer out those differences and roll out their proposal before their two-week break, and they appeared to be on track to meet their self-imposed deadline.

    But the talks broke down when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO knocked heads over how much workers would be paid as part of a proposed new visa program that would bring as many as 200,000 lower-skilled workers into the country each year.

    Mr. McCain said the final product likely will be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow.

    “Nobody is going to be totally happy with this legislation, no one will be because we have to make compromises,” Mr. McCain said.

    The trip also provided the senators with a firm reminder of the magnitude of the legislative challenges before them, as well as the difficulty involved in securing the border, when they watched a woman during a tour of the Mexican border scale over a fence.

    “Just witnessed a woman successfully climb an 18-ft bollard fence a few yards from us in,” Mr. McCain said via Twitter. “Border Patrol successfully apprehended her, but incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real.”

    Mr. Schumer said the overall experience of going to the border for the first time will help him educate his colleagues, and sell them on their plan.

    “You can read and you can study and you can talk but until you see things it doesn’t change reality,” Mr. Schumer said. “I’ll be able to explain it to my colleagues. Many of my colleagues say, ‘Why do we need to do anything more on the border?’ and we do.”

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    Read more: Immigration agreement 'very close' in Congress; guest workers still a hurdle - Washington Times
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  3. #3
    working4change
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    Please call and tell Leahy NO! We will not stand for this behavior! NO SECRECY!

    http://www.alipac.us/f8/warning-sena...8/#post1334905

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    Possible breakthrough on immigration reform

    March 29, 2013
    Associated Press

    WASHINGTON -- Big business and major labor unions appeared ready Friday to end a fight over a new low-skilled worker program that had threatened to upend negotiations on a sweeping immigration bill in the Senate providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants already in the U.S.

    Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, who's been brokering talks between the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement that negotiators are "very close, closer than we have ever been, and we are very optimistic." He said there were still a few issues remaining.

    The talks stalled late last week amid a dispute over wages for workers in the new program, and senators left town for a two-week recess with the issue in limbo. Finger-pointing erupted between the AFL-CIO and the chamber, with each side accusing the other of trying to sink immigration reform, leaving prospects for a resolution unclear.

    But talks resumed this week, and now officials from both sides indicate the wage issue has been largely resolved. An agreement would likely clear the way for a bipartisan group of senators to unveil legislation the week of April 8 to dramatically overhaul the U.S. immigration system, strengthening the border and cracking down on employers as well as remaking the legal immigration system while providing a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

    "We're feeling very optimistic on immigration: Aspiring Americans will receive the road map to citizenship they deserve and we can modernize 'future flow' without reducing wages for any local workers, regardless of what papers they carry," AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Hauser said in a statement. "Future flow" refers to future arrivals of legal immigrants.

    Under the emerging agreement, a new "W'' visa program would bring tens of thousands lower-skilled workers a year to the country. The program would be capped at 200,000 a year, but the number of visas would fluctuate, depending on unemployment rates, job openings, employer demand and data collected by a new federal bureau pushed by the labor movement as an objective monitor of the market.

    The workers would be able to change jobs and could seek permanent residency. Under current temporary worker programs, workers can't move from employer to employer and have no path to permanent U.S. residence and citizenship.

    The new visas would cover dozens of professions such as long-term care workers and hotel and hospitality employees. Currently there's no good way for employers to bring many such workers to the U.S.; an existing visa program for low-wage nonagricultural workers is capped at 66,000 per year and is supposed to apply only to seasonal or temporary jobs.

    The Chamber of Commerce said workers would get paid actual wages paid to American workers or the prevailing wages for the industry they're working in, whichever is higher. The Labor Department determines prevailing wage based on rates prevailing in specific localities, so that it would vary from city to city.

    The labor organization had accused the chamber of trying to pay workers in the new program poverty-level wages, something the chamber disputed.

    There was also disagreement about how to deal with certain higher-skilled construction jobs, such as electricians and welders, and it appears those will be excluded from the deal, said Geoff Burr, vice president of federal affairs at Associated Builders and Contractors. Burr said his group opposes such an exclusion because, even though unemployment in the construction industry is high right now, at times when it is low there can be labor shortages in high-skilled trades and contractors want to be able to bring in foreign workers. But unions pressed for the exclusion, Burr said.

    The low-skilled worker issue had loomed for weeks as perhaps the toughest matter to settle in months-long closed-door talks on immigration among Schumer and seven other senators, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida. The issue helped sink the last major attempt at immigration reform in 2007, when the legislation foundered on the Senate floor after an amendment was added to end a temporary worker program after five years, threatening a key priority of the business community.

    The amendment passed by just one vote, 49-48. President Barack Obama, a senator at the time, joined in the narrow majority voting to end the program after five years.

    Possible breakthrough on immigration reform | cleveland.com
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