CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Sept. 18, 2012 – 8:35 p.m.
Chambers Unveil Competing Visa Proposals
By David Harrison, CQ Staff
House Republicans and Senate Democrats are pushing dueling pieces of legislation this week that would grant visas to highly skilled immigrants, bringing a bitter public end to yearlong private talks aimed at reaching a compromise.
The eleventh-hour acrimony comes even though the two parties agree that immigration laws need to be loosened to allow more foreign graduates of American universities with high-tech degrees to stay and work in the country permanently. Business lobbyists had hoped Congress would achieve a rare bipartisan accomplishment on immigration and help ease the technology labor shortage.
But despite their overarching consensus, the parties bogged down on the bill’s details. Attempts to tweak the language or add other immigration-related provisions to win support eventually caused it to collapse, a common fate of immigration legislation.
As a result, the two chambers are presenting their own narrowly written plans, neither of which is likely to offer much more than partisan talking points before lawmakers depart to campaign.
House Judiciary Chairman
The House is scheduled to consider Smith’s bill under suspension of the rules Thursday, although it remains to be seen if Republicans can win over enough Democrats to gain the two-thirds majority needed for passage. A suspension vote removes the risk of amendments from anti-immigration conservatives and also prevents Democrats from filing a motion to recommit.
Schumer’s measure isn’t expected to reach the Senate floor before the election.
Smith’s legislation would abolish the 22-year-old diversity visa program — which awards 55,000 green cards a year to immigrants around the world via lottery — and grant those visas instead to foreign graduates in science, math, technology and engineering, known as the STEM fields. Schumer’s bill, on the other hand, would add 55,000 new green cards for STEM graduates, without taking the visas from the diversity visa program.
Democrats say diversity visas are essential in attracting immigrants from countries that would otherwise not send many people here.
But abolishing the diversity visas was necessary to win support from conservatives, for whom increasing the net number of new immigrants is anathema.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a prominent group that advocates curbing immigration, issued a statement Sept. 17 calling Smith’s bill a “mixed bag.”
“To the extent that the diversity visa lottery is a reckless and inefficient device for administering visas, we are pleased to see a bill that eliminates it,” the statement said.
“However, with tens of thousands of unemployed, highly skilled and educated American STEM workers — and half of recent college grads unemployed or underemployed — the increased number of green cards for foreign STEM grads will impose more competition for jobs.”
Chambers Unveil Competing Visa Proposals
Doctorates Preferred
Smith’s bill gives priority to immigrants with doctoral STEM degrees and awards any leftover visas to master’s recipients. Employers who want to sponsor an immigrant for a STEM visa for a green card — granting them permanent residency and, ultimately, citizenship — would have to first certify that there are no qualified U.S. workers available. Visa recipients would have to commit to working for their sponsoring employer for five years.
In a written statement, Smith said his measure “makes our immigration system smarter by eliminating the diversity visa program and reallocating up to 55,000 new green cards to the best foreign graduates with advanced degrees in STEM fields.”
The bill does not include provisions making it easier for green card holders to bring their spouses and children to the United States and allowing children of green card holders to stay in the country when they reach adulthood, which Senate Democrats had sought. Schumer included both in the legislation he introduced Tuesday. The Democrats’ bill, unlike Smith’s, also includes a two-year sunset.
Schumer, the Senate Democrats’ point man on immigration, had engaged in long-running talks with Smith trying to reach a compromise on these family reunification visas. Also involved was Sen.
Smith, however, balked. Toward the end of the August recess, after it became clear that talks with the Senate were not going anywhere, he decided to approach House Democrats.
But House Democrats, unhappy at being frozen out of the earlier negotiations, insisted they would only agree to a bill that awarded new STEM green cards without getting rid of the diversity visa program. They were wary of setting a precedent under which offering visas for one group of immigrants would have to be offset by visas from another group of immigrants, according to a House Democratic staff member.
“I would like to improve the STEM visa program without doing damage to other parts of our legal immigration system,” said Rep.
Rep.
Partisan Posturing
Schumer’s and Lofgren’s bills offer Democrats an alternative to rally behind, allowing them to claim they want to help highly skilled immigrants even as they oppose Smith’s proposal.
Likewise, Smith’s bill, should it pass, would allow House Republicans to check off another item on the “Jobs Agenda” they rolled out last year, which called for more visas for high-tech workers. The legislation would join dozens of other House GOP “jobs bills” that have no hope of Senate passage. It also gives Republicans a reason to claim they are not reflexively opposed to immigration, a charge that Democrats have leveled this campaign season.
For business and technology lobbyists, many of whom spent months quietly supporting the bipartisan effort, the negotiation’s collapse is a disappointment. But Randel K. Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president for labor and immigration, held out hope lawmakers would be able to strike a deal during the lame-duck session. After all, Congress didn’t approve the major 1986 immigration overhaul (PL 99-603) until November.
Chambers Unveil Competing Visa Proposals
“We all hoped there would be a bipartisan bill that could move its way to the president’s desk this year,” Johnson said.
“The collapse of those talks has hurt that possibility, but we hope they can be resumed when Congress comes in in November.”