Comprehensive Immigration Reform: On Life Support?

Comprehensive Immigration Reform: On Life Support? Senators who passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in May, and Representatives who passed an enforcement-only immigration bill last December, continue to talk, not so much to each other, but past each other. House and Senate Committees will contact a "road show" of public hearings in July and August, not so much to try to reach a compromise, but to win public support for their respective positions in advance of the November election. The hearings kick off on July 5 at the U.S. Border Patrol Station in Imperial Beach, California where the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation will examine "Border Vulnerabilities and International Terrorism". The venue will change to Laredo, Texas on July 7 though the topic will remain the same. For more information, see http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/itnhear.htm Also on July 5, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct a field hearing entitled "Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Examining the Need for a Guest Worker Program." For details and a list of witnesses, see http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=1983 Polls show that most Republican voters would like to see an immigration bill enacted this year. In a conservative district in Utah last week, Representative Chris Cannon (R-UT), a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform easily beat back a challenge from a well-financed proponent of the House's enforcement-only approach to immigration. Some House Republicans have tried to fashion immigration plans which they hope might bridge the gap between the House and the Senate bills. Congressman Mike Pence (R-IND) introduced the "Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act" which combines increases immigration enforcement with a guest worker program, but which completely rejects the legalization provisions of the Senate bill. See http://mikepence.house.gov/News/DocumentQuery.aspx?CatagoryID=2146 Recently, Republicans in the Senate have signaled their House counterparts regarding their desire to reach a compromise solution. Several senators indicated that they could accept a bill which puts enforcement ahead of the implementation of the legalization and guest worker programs. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) agreed with Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to drop taxation amendments from the Senate bill, and accept those in the House bill instead. On June 29, nine House Republicans introduced "The Securing Knowledge, Innovation, and Leadership (SKIL) Act" (H.R.5744) which would raise the H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000 and the EB cap from 140,000 to 290,000. Both categories would benefit from numerous exemptions to the cap. The chief House sponsor of the SKIL bill, Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) stated that "Unfortunately, we are not graduating the number of Americans with advanced degrees in math and sciences that our high tech and medical industries need to compete. Until we can fix the problem of not having enough highly skilled American graduates, we need to pass the SKIL Bill...We stand to potentially lose the next technological giants like Yahoo! or Google if we do not keep America's workforce competitive. We must maintain our edge by providing opportunities to highly educated and skilled individuals interested in staying here in the U.S." We link to a two-page summary of the SKIL bill at http://shusterman.com/pdf/skil506.pdf The SKIL bill was introduced in the Senate in May by Senator John Cornyn (R- TX) and was subsequently incorporated into the Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2006. We discussed its effects on the H-1B and EB categories in the June 2006 issue of SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE. See http://shusterman.com/toc-siu.html Although the legalization and guest worker provisions of the Senate bill have been written off by many pundits, we believe that there is an excellent chance that some version of the SKIL bill will be enacted into law before the end of 2006.