Thread: Immigration Vote Sinks H-1B Visa Deal

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... QOIK11.DTL

Immigration vote sinks H-1B visa deal

Collapse of Senate bill derails tech's bid for more foreigners
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, June 30, 2007

When senators killed a comprehensive immigration bill this week they derailed a last-minute compromise that would have roughly doubled the number of H-1B visas issued each year in return for reforms to prevent Americans from being pushed out of white-collar jobs.

This program, though a hot topic in Silicon Valley, was just a tiny wrinkle in the huge immigration mess that revolved mainly around the 12 million undocumented workers who do everything from pick grapes to watch babies.

But with the collapse of the Senate bill that might have solved the issue of legal, skilled workers, tech leaders must now seek other ways to achieve the increased hiring ability they had sought, while critics of the controversial program have lost oversight rules designed to prevent H-1B visas from being abused.

The Senate failure also shifts the spotlight to the House of Representatives, where Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, will be at the center of the lobbying blitz that is expected to resume July 10 after lawmakers return to Capitol Hill after a brief recess.

Lofgren issued a statement after the Senate vote saying the bill's demise effectively ends chances for comprehensive immigration reform. But she left open the prospect that House leaders would consider "whether anything can be done" to fix the dysfunctional immigration system.

"The approach that the Senate took is clearly dead," said Oracle Corp. lobbyist Robert Hoffman, who also represents the employer coalition Compete America. "We find ourselves in an emergency," Hoffman said, because the current year's allotment of H-1B visas has already been exhausted while industry says it has skilled positions that can't be filled.

The H-1B program has allowed U.S. employers to hire an average of about 130,000 college-educated foreign nationals each year during the past six years for which U.S. immigration statistics are available. H-1B visa holders can work in the United States for up to six years before either returning home or applying for a green card.

While tech employers look for ways to either pass a separate bill on H-1B issues or attach their wish list to some other legislation, critics of the program can kiss goodbye the last-minute Senate compromise that had acknowledged some of their complaints.

According to a Senate staffer involved in the talks, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, who was negotiating for tech leaders, struck a bargain with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who had led the effort to force more oversight of the program.

That now-dead deal would have authorized U.S. employers to hire 225,000 to 290,000 H-1B workers per year -- pleasing tech employers -- while forcing reforms aimed at so-called job shops that employ large numbers of H-1B workers as contract programmers.

Now, H-1B critics such as Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Ron Hira and Sacramento programmer Kim Berry -- who forced the job shop issue into the Senate debate -- must redirect their arguments to Lofgren and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom are close to Silicon Valley.

Also left in limbo by the Senate meltdown are an estimated 1.1 million legal, foreign-born workers and their family members -- a plurality of whom are from India. These legal workers are stuck in a backlog of H-1B recipients who face long waits for green cards. Jwalant Pradhan of Immigration Voice, which lobbies for these frustrated temporary workers, said his group was not sad to see the Senate bill die because lawmakers seemed to be solving the problems of undocumented workers at the expense of legal guest workers like themselves.

"They threw us under the bus," Pradhan said of the Senate leaders.

Now, House leaders will face demands from tech lobbyists, farm industry honchos and other powerful interests that had some stake in the Senate bill. Any sense of which lobby might get what will have to wait until lawmakers return from their recess.

"The House will not sit on its hands," one key staffer said. "But what will get done is still up in the air."

E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.

And what about the hundreds of thousands or more unemployed "tech workers" who are Americans, who are here, who are available and looking for work for the past 6 years since their former employers hit the road to off-shore locations?

Give me a break. We need an increase in the H1B program like we need another wave from Katrina.

Geeezzz .. these people just don't get it?

Grrrrr!!!

Collapse of Senate bill derails tech's bid for more foreigners

Would anybody care to make a small wager on that?

According to a Senate staffer involved in the talks, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, who was negotiating for tech leaders, struck a bargain with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who had led the effort to force more oversight of the program.

Hmmm..........Democrats "negotiating" among themselves on how to give American jobs to foreign labor.

We must keep our eye on Lofgren, who is a former immigration attorney. She and Pelosi are owned by Silicon Valley corporations, and the high-tech and agriculture lobbies.


... Lofgren issued a statement after the Senate vote saying the bill's demise effectively ends chances for comprehensive immigration reform. But she left open the prospect that House leaders would consider "whether anything can be done" to fix the dysfunctional immigration system. ...

... Now, H-1B critics such as Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Ron Hira and Sacramento programmer Kim Berry -- who forced the job shop issue into the Senate debate -- must redirect their arguments to Lofgren and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom are close to Silicon Valley. ...