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1. COMMENT

Congress To Employers - Drop Dead

Like it or not, Congress has to address the untenable situation
of having 10 million undocumented in the US. The Senate has begun
the difficult job of fixing the problem, and there is an
excellent chance that the INA will be totally rewritten in the
coming weeks. In the new INA, where will employment-based
immigration stand, particularly for tech employers? In a 180-
degree change from today, employers will become the lowman on the
totem pole. Furthermore, the employer visa of choice, the H-1B,
will be eviscerated and will no longer serve as the golden road
to a green card since S.1348 removes dual intent (US consuls in
India will surely be invoking 214(b) liberally). To top it all
off, immigration enforcement provisions with real teeth are
coming, disproportionately affecting larger employers. The coming
enforcement will be unlike anything even seen or even
contemplated before. From an employer's perspective, all hell is
breaking loose on the immigration front.

Can anything be done to stop this anti-employer tsunami? In the
coming days, it is critical for tech employers to lobby for an
amendment to S. 1348 on the Senate floor to incorporate SKIL into
the final bill. Looking at the larger picture, it is fair to ask,
"How did employment-based immigration end up in this unfortunate
predicament? The answer is that it has been 12 years in the
making. Corporate America has for too long taken a myopic view,
concerning itself only with legal and skilled workers. This
narrow view manifested itself with "split the bill" in IIRAIRA,
and continued with ACWIA, and AC21, and left to Congress the
difficult task of how to deal with undocumented and unskilled
immigration. Tech employers can avoid being left in the cold in
CIR - now is the time to lobby for enlightened immigration reform
as part of a broad pro-immigration coalition.

We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by
writing to mailto:editor@ilw.com.
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