Thread: Senate Votes to Cut Guest Worker Program

May 23, 2007
Senate Votes to Cut Guest Worker Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:12 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate voted Wednesday to slash the number of foreign workers who could come to the U.S. on temporary visas as part of a broad bipartisan immigration bill.

A new guest worker program would be capped at 200,000 a year under the proposal, which passed 74-24 over strong opposition by the Bush administration.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the change, proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., would interfere with a ''central component'' of the White House-backed immigration measure. That plan provided for 400,000 worker visas annually, plus an option to increase that number to 600,000 if market conditions demand it.

''The Bingaman amendment would eliminate this critical flexibility and cut the size of the temporary worker program in half,'' Gutierrez said in a statement.

His comments came as the administration urged the Senate to approve the immigration legislation despite fresh criticism from presidential hopefuls and lawmakers in both parties.

''The proposal offers a much-needed solution for our nation's broken immigration system,'' the White House budget office said in a statement. ''This proposal would deliver an immigration system that is secure, productive, orderly and fair.''

The measure would grant an estimated 12 million unlawful immigrants quick legal status, toughen border security. It also would create a new workplace verification system to bar undocumented workers from getting jobs.

It would set up a point system for future immigration applicants that would place less emphasis on family connections and more on education and skills in demand by U.S. businesses.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential hopeful, announced plans to challenge the point system, saying it devalued family.

The scheme ''constitutes at minimum a radical experiment in social engineering and a departure from our tradition of having family and employers invite immigrants to come,'' Obama said, adding that he would work to phase it out.

A 2008 rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said she would seek to lift new caps the measure would place on visas for family members of legal permanent residents.

Republicans sought to respond to conservative critics by trying to bolster security provisions and make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get on a path to citizenship.

Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed cracking down on illegal border crossers with mandatory prison sentences.

''Everyone needs to know that America is changing its immigration laws. We're going to be serious about enforcing them. If you break our laws, you do so at your own peril, and you will lose your freedom,'' said Graham, R-S.C.

The Senate was also considering a proposal by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, that would allow visas to be revoked without court review.

''Current law allows aliens to run to the steps of our country's courthouses and take advantage of our system,'' Grassley said. He said potential terrorists could stay in the country unless lawmakers approved his change.

Democrats heard objections from labor unions and immigrant groups about the guest worker program and focused on shrinking or altering it.

The temporary worker plan would bring in laborers to stay for up to three two-year stints, provided they left the United States for a year between each stay. A Democratic attempt to strip the program altogether failed Tuesday in the first major test of the fragile immigration compromise.

The conservatives, liberals and centrists who worked out the deal are struggling to keep it intact.

Senate leaders in both parties, however, say it is important to have a vigorous debate. They have postponed a final vote until June.


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-C ... ation.html

The Senate believes cutting this program is going to make us happy. NOT!

They planned this all along to cut this number in half. Don't fall for this scam!

The Senate was also considering a proposal by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, that would allow visas to be revoked without court review.

''Current law allows aliens to run to the steps of our country's courthouses and take advantage of our system,'' Grassley said. He said potential terrorists could stay in the country unless lawmakers approved his change.

I think this is a good idea. Anything an illegal alien can do, so can a terrorist! When we say visa revoked, there should be no appeal process.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

The Senate believes cutting this program is going to make us happy. NOT!

They planned this all along to cut this number in half. Don't fall for this scam!

The Senate was also considering a proposal by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, that would allow visas to be revoked without court review.

''Current law allows aliens to run to the steps of our country's courthouses and take advantage of our system,'' Grassley said. He said potential terrorists could stay in the country unless lawmakers approved his change.

I think this is a good idea. Anything an illegal alien can do, so can a terrorist! When we say visa revoked, there should be no appeal process.

Dixie

Agreed! They should be trying to kill the bill, not amend it.

And, it's still too high to prevent wage undercutting. I know because I'm in IT and for years, between 2000 and 2003 (if memory serves) the H-1b yearly quota was 195K. Even though that visa was used for all sorts of professions besides IT, it was enough of an influx that we really felt the effects. You can count on certain occupations becoming almost off-limits to citizens if this goes through. I remember hearing from an eyewitness to an Oracle implementation in Boise of all places. First they brought a few foreigners in. Within six months to a year all the local workers were gone, and the team was staffed entirely with foreigners here on visas. That's one way it works.

So, if you know someone who prefers construction, landscaping or other manual labor, or someone who fell down economically and needs to start over, or teenagers looking for after school or summer jobs, it will just get harder for them.

So, 200K is a LOT and the American labor market will feel it if they let in that many. Openings will vanish and wages will stagnate or fall.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

And, it's still too high to prevent wage undercutting. I know because I'm in IT and for years, between 2000 and 2003 (if memory serves) the H-1b yearly quota was 195K. Even though that visa was used for all sorts of professions besides IT, it was enough of an influx that we really felt the effects. You can count on certain occupations becoming almost off-limits to citizens if this goes through. I remember hearing from an eyewitness to an Oracle implementation in Boise of all places. First they brought a few foreigners in. Within six months to a year all the local workers were gone, and the team was staffed entirely with foreigners here on visas. That's one way it works.

So, if you know someone who prefers construction, landscaping or other manual labor, or someone who fell down economically and needs to start over, or teenagers looking for after school or summer jobs, it will just get harder for them.

So, 200K is a LOT and the American labor market will feel it if they let in that many. Openings will vanish and wages will stagnate or fall.

Betsy, you will certainly find this within any GE company. We do not even have an IT department anymore, and all of the IT support desks have been moved to, you guessed it, India.
On top of that fiasco, GE keeps bringing in sofware engineers from India obviously much less for what American software engineers would work for.
Lastly, their level of programming ability doesn't seem to span much beyond the old basic programming language. We have internal proof--I wish I could get to post--that using third world software programmers has done nothing but hurt us.