Thread: Prospects dim for immigration bill

Posted on Fri, Jun. 08, 2007email thisprint this
Prospects dim for immigration bill
By Dave Montgomery

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - With a White House-backed immigration bill on life support in the Senate, the likelihood that Congress can overhaul the nation's tattered immigration system before the onset of the 2008 presidential election year is growing increasingly remote.

The White House, Senate leaders and the bill's supporters insist that the measure can be resuscitated. But thus far they've been unable to bridge a maelstrom of colliding special interests, and the challenges will only intensify as election-year politics complicate their efforts.

"There's a faint pulse there, but it suffered a heavy blow on Thursday," said Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that embraced Bush's call for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. "It would be a major surprise at this point if it came back to life."

The 627-page bill was pulled from the Senate floor late Thursday after Democratic and Republican leaders failed to resolve a standoff over GOP demands to submit additional amendments. The bill's collapse dealt a withering setback to President Bush, who'd made a comprehensive restructuring of the nation's immigration laws his top domestic priority.

The president will travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Republican senators to try to get the measure back on track. The president's two top emissaries on the issue - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez - held conference calls Friday with key senators.

"We're just going full speed ahead to get the bill back on the floor and move it forward," Gutierrez said in a roundtable interview with regional reporters.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both promised to keep the bill going. Members of a bipartisan coalition that crafted that bill were in discussions with Senate leaders Friday to get past the dustup over amendments. They expressed optimism that the bill could return to the Senate floor within the next several weeks.

Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Democratic leader of the bipartisan coalition, used a home-state analogy to forecast the bill's future, saying he was reminded of the 1967 Boston Red Sox, who trailed throughout the season and roared back to grab "victory out of the jaws of defeat."

"And that's what we intend to do with the immigration bill," Kennedy said at a Friday news conference with other members of the bipartisan group. "We are not giving up, we are not giving in."

But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of the bill's leading Republican opponents, expressed doubts that the bill would reappear, saying Democratic leaders don't want to risk allowing amendments that could be politically awkward for their members.

"I don't think Harry Reid has any intention of bringing this bill back up," he said.

After enduring months of declining popularity and faced with growing public opposition to the Iraq war, Bush has looked toward enactment of a major immigration bill as a crowning domestic achievement in the remainder of his second term in office.

But in its attempt to bridge opposing factions, the bill has pleased no one, dividing Democrats and Republicans as well as the array of advocacy groups that have stakes in the issue. Conservatives have assailed the provisions that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, while labor-backed Democrats have attacked a guest-worker program that would bring in low-skilled foreign workers.

Other clashes have erupted over provisions that would create a merit-based point system and reduce family-based immigration, prompting efforts to restore family-based immigration. Virtually every part of the bill is filled with lightning-rod provisions.

Those divisions will still be in play if the bill returns to the Senate floor, raising uncertainty for final passage. If the Senate approves a bill, the same battles would be replayed in the House of Representatives and in a joint conference committee that would resolve differences between the two chambers.

After beating back amendments that threatened to undercut the fragile "grand bargain," sponsors lost ground at midweek with surprise amendments that would phase out the guest-worker program. Cornyn also succeeded in tacking on an amendment that would enable law enforcement officers to look into the backgrounds of applicants rejected for legalization.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who sponsored the amendment to phase out the guest-worker program in five years, said many members on both sides of the aisle were resentful that the bill was put together by no more than a dozen senators working behind the scenes, without input from others in the 100-member chamber.

"Virtually everyone who brought an amendment to the Senate was told, `This is going to kill the bill, it upsets the compromise,' all that nonsense," he said. "What it meant is they came to the floor of the Senate and said their ideas were the only ones that were worthy. And when my amendment passed, they had an apoplectic seizure and said this is going to kill the bill."

Kathleen Walker, an El Paso, Texas, attorney and the incoming president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the drafters invited more problems by including the merit-based point system and family reunification changes, concepts that were absent from the 2006 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate but died in a stalemate with the House.

"By throwing more into that melting pot of immigration reform," she said, "they made a really nasty tasting stew."

Among those most affected by the Senate immigration bill:

_Illegal immigrants: The estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country would be able to attain legal status under renewable Z visas after paying fines and fees, learning English and passing criminal background checks.

_Builders, contractors, landscaping companies, restaurants, hotels, food processing plants, janitorial services: As many as 600,000 guest workers would be allowed annually to enter the country to help fill what businesses say is a chronic low-skilled labor shortage.

_Farmers: Farm operators would get a streamlined new guest-worker program, refining the current H-2A program, which many consider inefficient. Only about 30,000 foreign workers annually come in through the present H-2A program. The immigration bill would give 1.5 million farm laborers a chance for legal status.

_Border states: The government would build 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and would deploy an infusion of technology and manpower to strengthen border enforcement.

_Employers: Would face tough penalties for hiring illegal immigrants and would be required to screen all job applicants through an electronic verification system linked to national databases.

_High-tech employers: Industry leaders complain the bill wouldn't do enough to compensate for a shortage of skilled workers and makes it more difficult to hire qualified people from overseas.

_Families: Once the current backlog for green cards is eliminated, very few extended family members of U.S. citizens and legal residents would be allowed entry through family migration.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentin ... 344358.htm

Among those most affected by the Senate immigration bill:

American Citizens: Stuck with the bill to pay for this big mess and a once great country, reduced to third world status.