Navarrette: Skills put destiny in your hands, not govt's
RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. The San Diego Union Tribune
When discussing the immigration compromise that he helped shape, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez sounds like a proud father - and a protective one.
Gutierrez has much to be proud of. This legislation represents an intricate give and take.
The fact that the right and the left each found plenty to love and hate in this agreement attests to its fairness. No one got the better of anyone. And that's a good thing.
And yet the deal is fragile, and so it needs protecting. The extremes at both ends of the spectrum are saying they'd rather have no bill than this bill. If they don't start being constructive, they might get their wish. Then they can go back to bellyaching about the status quo.
One especially vulnerable part of the compromise is the guest worker program. The idea is to import hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers each year to do jobs that Americans won't do. The bill's sponsors suggested 400,000 workers per year. But recently, senators abruptly trimmed the number to 200,000.
Gutierrez doesn't think the lower number is enough, and he suggests the void might be filled by you know who.
As for those jobs Americans won't do, they're everywhere in this economy - especially if you're talking about young Americans. Many have no interest in being hired hands.
A reader in Vermont wrote that his neighbors are "making a big deal about the illegals working in the dairy farms" and "claim that they are taking their jobs." Yet, the reader noted, "the dairy farmers claim no one here wants to work on dairy farms."
The same goes for those who own and manage restaurants, said the woman who called into a radio show I was on recently. She said she hired illegal immigrants at what she considered a good wage - $15 per hour - because she couldn't find Americans who wanted to be cooks or dishwashers.
I'm not about to excuse the hiring of illegal immigrants. That's the very root of the problem. But I've become a bit more sympathetic to employers - especially small-business owners - who have jobs that they urgently need filled.
I asked Gutierrez what he made of the charge that foreign workers take jobs away from the native born. "It's just not true," he said. "Our unemployment rate is below the average of each of the last four decades. So we do not have enough people to do all the jobs that are available, especially low-skilled jobs."
I suggested to the commerce secretary that the message we ought to be giving the low-skilled is to stop blaming others for their problems and go get more skills. He agreed.
"If there is one piece of advice you can give people today," Gutierrez said, "it is to increase your skills. And do it every single year. The bottom line is that when you have more skills, you're making more money."
Quite right. And if you have those skills, and a decent work ethic, you won't have to worry about guest workers or immigration deals or competition. Your destiny will be in your hands, and not in the hands of Congress.
What a liberating notion.
Read another column by Ruben Navarrette Jr. Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union Tribune. E-mail: ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session 2007
Recent Votes:
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session (2007)
Vote Date Question Result Description U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session (2007)
Vote Date Issue Question Result Description
00201 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1316 Agreed to Dorgan Amdt. No. 1316; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-yer period.
00200 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1202 Rejected Obama Amdt. No. 1202, As Modified; To provide a date on which the authority of the section relating to the increasing of American competitiveness through a merit-based evaluation system for immigrants shall be terminated.
00199 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1339 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1339; To require that the U.S. VISIT system- the biometric border check-in/check-out system first required by Congress in 1996 that is already well past its already postponed 2005 implementation due date- be finished as part of the enforcement trigger.
00198 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1151 Agreed to Inhofe Amdt. No. 1151; To amend title 4, United States Code, to declare English as the national language of the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.
00197 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1384 Agreed to Salazar Amdt. No. 1384; To preserve and enhance the role of the English language.
00196 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1374 Rejected Ensign Amdt. No. 1374; To improve the criteria and weights of the merit-based evaluation system.
00195 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1183 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Clinton Amdt. No. 1183, As Further Modified; To reclassify the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives.
00194 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1460 Agreed to Kyl Amdt. No. 1460; To modify the allocation of visas with respect to the backlog of family-based visa petitions.
00193 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1194 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Menendez Amdt. No 1194; To modify the deadline for the family backlog reduction.
00192 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1234 Agreed to Sessions Amdt. No. 1234; To save American taxpayers up to $24 billion in the 10 years after passage of this Act, by preventing the earned income tax credit, which is, according to the Congressional Research Service, the largest anti-poverty entitlement program of the Federal Government, from being claimed by Y temporary workers or illegal aliens given status by this Act until they adjust to legal permanent resident status.
00191 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1331 Agreed to Reid Amdt. No. 1331; To clarify the application of the earned income tax credit.
00190 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1250 Agreed to Cornyn Amdt. No. 1250; To address documentation of employment and to make an amendment with respect to mandatory disclosure of information
00189 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1267 Rejected Bingaman Amdt. No. 1267 As Modified; To remove the requirement that Y-1 nonimmigrant visa holders leave the United States before they are able to renew their visa.
00188 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1197 Rejected DeMint Amdt. No. 1197; To require health care coverage for holders of Z nonimmigrant visas.
00187 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1184 Rejected Cornyn Amdt. No. 1184, As Modified; To establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and other criminals.
00186 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1333 Agreed to Kennedy Amdt. No. 1333, as Modified; To increase the immigration-related penalties associated with various criminal activities
00185 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1176 Agreed to Feingold Amdt. No. 1176; To establish commissions to review the facts and circumstances surrounding injustices suffered by European Americans, European Latin Americans, and Jewish refugees during World War II.
00184 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1170 Rejected McConnell Amdt. No. 1170; To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require individuals voting in person to present photo identification.
00183 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1231 Agreed to Durbin Amdt. No. 1231; To ensure that employers make efforts to recruit American workers.
00182 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1189 Rejected Allard Amdt. No. 1189; To eliminate the preference given to people who entered the United States illegally over people seeking to enter the country legally in the merit-based evaluation system for visas.
___________________________________________ 00180 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship program.
00180 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI (related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship Program.
00178 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1181 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1181; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-year period.
00177 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1158 Rejected Coleman Amdt. No. 1158; To amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to facilitate information sharing between federal and local law enforcement officials related to an individual's immigration status.
00176 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1186 Agreed to Akaka Amdt. No. 1186; To exempt children of certain Filipino World War II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas.
00175 23-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1169 Agreed to Bingaman Amdt. No. 1169; To reduce to 200,000 the number of certain non-immigrants permitted to be admitted during a fiscal year.
00174 22-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1153 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1153; To strike the Y nonimmigrant guestworker program.
00173 21-May S. 1348 On the Cloture Motion Agreed to Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Consider S.1348; Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
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"I think it's safe to say that the United States Senate would be the laughingstock of the country if "” after all of the hyperbole and all of the publicity and all of the proposals and objections "” we're not able to finish this bill." "”Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
WASHINGTON (AP) "” A proposed immigration overhaul narrowly survived strong Senate challenges Wednesday, boosting its backers' hopes that the fiercely debated legislation might soon win passage and advance to the House. Senators first turned back a Republican bid to reduce the number of illegal immigrants who could gain lawful status. Hours later, they rejected a Democrat's effort to postpone the bill's shift to an emphasis on education and skills among visa applicants as opposed to family connections.
Both amendments were seen as potentially fatal blows to the fragile coalition backing the bill, which remains under attack from the right and left. The bill "” which would tighten borders and give many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants a pathway to legal status "” is a priority for President Bush.
The long day and night of votes contained some setbacks for the coalition's leaders, however. They failed to defeat a Republican proposal to give law enforcement agents access to rejected visa applications, which could lead to the arrest and deportation of some illegal immigrants who otherwise might escape detection.
On balance, however, the coalition's "grand bargainers" felt they had withstood their toughest challenges. "This means people want a bill very badly," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: House | Senate | Senators | US Senate | Sens | Sen. Edward M Kennedy The Senate voted 51-46 to reject a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar criminals "” including those ordered by judges to be deported "” from gaining legal status. Democrats siphoned support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and *** offenders, from gaining legalization. The Senate backed that amendment 66-32.
The Senate also rejected a proposal by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that bill supporters called a "killer amendment." It would have delayed the bill's shift in favor of attracting foreign workers with needed skills as opposed to keeping families together. Menendez won 53 votes, seven short of the 60 needed under a Senate procedural rule invoked by his opponents.
Menendez's proposal would have allowed more than 800,000 people who had applied for permanent legal status by the beginning of 2007 to obtain green cards based purely on their family connections "” a preference the bill ends for most relatives who got in line after May 2005.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a chief advocate of the bill, said most of the visa applicants Menendez wanted to help are so far back in line that it would be decades before the Homeland Security Department could process them. The Senate adopted Kyl's alternative, which would retain the family preference status for applicants who might win approval by 2026 under the department's projections.
Menendez, whose parents were Cuban immigrants, called the Kyl amendment "a fig leaf" that would make no meaningful change to the bill.
Cornyn had painted his criminals amendment as a "defining issue" for any presidential candidate "” a sign of the degree to which the contentious debate is bleeding over into the GOP campaign fray.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alone among his party's presidential aspirants in backing the immigration measure, opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
McCain was joined in opposing the amendment by the Senate's four Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Barack Obama of Illinois.
After his defeat, Cornyn said those who voted against the proposal "failed to take an opportunity to help restore public confidence that we're actually serious about passing an immigration law that could actually work."
Cornyn prevailed on another matter opposed by the grand bargainers, however. His amendment, adopted 57 to 39, would make it easier to locate and deport illegal immigrants whose visa applications are rejected.
The bill would have barred law enforcement agencies from seeing applications for so-called Z visas, which can lead to citizenship if granted. Cornyn said legal authorities should know if applicants have criminal records that would warrant their deportation.
Opponents said eligible applicants might be afraid to file applications if they believe they are connected to deportation actions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an interview that Cornyn's amendment was "not a deal-killer" but would have to be changed in House-Senate negotiations.
Other amendments defeated Wednesday included a Democratic effort to alter the temporary guest worker program that would be created by the bill.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico wanted to allow workers to come for six consecutive years. The Senate voted 57-41 to reject the amendment, retaining the bill's call for most guest workers to go home for a year between each of three two-year stints.
The Senate also rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to change the Z visa program whereby illegal immigrants could gain lawful status. DeMint proposed requiring them to buy high-deductible health plans to be eligible for visas.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session 2007
Recent Votes:
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session (2007)
Vote Date Question Result Description U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session (2007)
Vote Date Issue Question Result Description
00201 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1316 Agreed to Dorgan Amdt. No. 1316; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-yer period.
00200 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1202 Rejected Obama Amdt. No. 1202, As Modified; To provide a date on which the authority of the section relating to the increasing of American competitiveness through a merit-based evaluation system for immigrants shall be terminated.
00199 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1339 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1339; To require that the U.S. VISIT system- the biometric border check-in/check-out system first required by Congress in 1996 that is already well past its already postponed 2005 implementation due date- be finished as part of the enforcement trigger.
00198 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1151 Agreed to Inhofe Amdt. No. 1151; To amend title 4, United States Code, to declare English as the national language of the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.
00197 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1384 Agreed to Salazar Amdt. No. 1384; To preserve and enhance the role of the English language.
00196 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1374 Rejected Ensign Amdt. No. 1374; To improve the criteria and weights of the merit-based evaluation system.
00195 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1183 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Clinton Amdt. No. 1183, As Further Modified; To reclassify the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives.
00194 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1460 Agreed to Kyl Amdt. No. 1460; To modify the allocation of visas with respect to the backlog of family-based visa petitions.
00193 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1194 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Menendez Amdt. No 1194; To modify the deadline for the family backlog reduction.
00192 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1234 Agreed to Sessions Amdt. No. 1234; To save American taxpayers up to $24 billion in the 10 years after passage of this Act, by preventing the earned income tax credit, which is, according to the Congressional Research Service, the largest anti-poverty entitlement program of the Federal Government, from being claimed by Y temporary workers or illegal aliens given status by this Act until they adjust to legal permanent resident status.
00191 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1331 Agreed to Reid Amdt. No. 1331; To clarify the application of the earned income tax credit.
00190 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1250 Agreed to Cornyn Amdt. No. 1250; To address documentation of employment and to make an amendment with respect to mandatory disclosure of information
00189 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1267 Rejected Bingaman Amdt. No. 1267 As Modified; To remove the requirement that Y-1 nonimmigrant visa holders leave the United States before they are able to renew their visa.
00188 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1197 Rejected DeMint Amdt. No. 1197; To require health care coverage for holders of Z nonimmigrant visas.
00187 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1184 Rejected Cornyn Amdt. No. 1184, As Modified; To establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and other criminals.
00186 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1333 Agreed to Kennedy Amdt. No. 1333, as Modified; To increase the immigration-related penalties associated with various criminal activities
00185 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1176 Agreed to Feingold Amdt. No. 1176; To establish commissions to review the facts and circumstances surrounding injustices suffered by European Americans, European Latin Americans, and Jewish refugees during World War II.
00184 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1170 Rejected McConnell Amdt. No. 1170; To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require individuals voting in person to present photo identification.
00183 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1231 Agreed to Durbin Amdt. No. 1231; To ensure that employers make efforts to recruit American workers.
00182 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1189 Rejected Allard Amdt. No. 1189; To eliminate the preference given to people who entered the United States illegally over people seeking to enter the country legally in the merit-based evaluation system for visas.
___________________________________________ 00180 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship program.
00180 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI (related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship Program.
00178 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1181 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1181; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-year period.
00177 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1158 Rejected Coleman Amdt. No. 1158; To amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to facilitate information sharing between federal and local law enforcement officials related to an individual's immigration status.
00176 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1186 Agreed to Akaka Amdt. No. 1186; To exempt children of certain Filipino World War II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas.
00175 23-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1169 Agreed to Bingaman Amdt. No. 1169; To reduce to 200,000 the number of certain non-immigrants permitted to be admitted during a fiscal year.
00174 22-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1153 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1153; To strike the Y nonimmigrant guestworker program.
00173 21-May S. 1348 On the Cloture Motion Agreed to Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Consider S.1348; Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
03:30 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A bipartisan immigration bill narrowly survived a potentially fatal challenge on Wednesday when the Senate turned back a Republican bid to limit the illegal immigrants who could gain lawful status.
The close vote on a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar felons -- including those court-ordered to be deported -- from legalization reflected the delicate position of the contentious immigration bill, which remains under threat from the right and the left.
The vote was 51-46 against the amendment. Democrats succeeded in ****ing support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and *** offenders, from gaining legalization. The Senate backed that amendment 66-32.
Cornyn had painted his effort as a key vote for any presidential candidate -- a sign of the degree to which the contentious debate is bleeding over into the GOP campaign fray.
The amendment "is a defining issue for those who seek the highest office in the land to demonstrate their respect for the rule of law and to demonstrate their desire to return law and order to our immigration system," Cornyn said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alone among his party's presidential aspirants in backing the immigration measure, opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called Cornyn's measure "a stealth, Trojan horse amendment to kill the bill."
Kennedy, an architect of the bill, said it "would exclude hundreds of thousands from the benefits in this bill and undermine the bipartisan compromise that (senators) worked so long and so hard to produce."
Jun 7, 6:41 AM EDT Immigration bill in doubt after vote
By CHARLES BABINGTON Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A fragile compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants risks coming unraveled after the Senate voted early Thursday to place a five-year limit on a program meant to provide U.S. employers with 200,000 temporary foreign workers annually.
The 49-48 vote came two weeks after the Senate, also by a one-vote margin, rejected the same amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan. The North Dakota Democrat says immigrants take many jobs Americans could fill.
The reversal dismayed backers of the immigration bill, which is supported by President Bush but loathed by many conservatives. Business interests and their congressional allies were already angry that the temporary worker program had been cut in half from its original 400,000-person-a-year target.
A five-year sunset, they said, could knock the legs from the precarious bipartisan coalition aligned with the White House. The Dorgan amendment "is a tremendous problem, but it's correctable," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. The coalition will try as early as Thursday to persuade at least one senator to help reverse the outcome yet again, he said.
Until the Dorgan vote was tallied, Specter and other leaders of the so-called "grand bargain" on immigration had enjoyed a fairly good day.
They had turned back a bid to reduce the number of illegal immigrants who could gain lawful status. They also defeated an effort to postpone the bill's shift to an emphasis on education and skills among visa applicants as opposed to family connections.
And they fended off an amendment, by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would have ended a new point system for those seeking permanent resident "green cards" after five years rather than 14 years.
All three amendments were seen as potentially fatal blows to the bill, which would tighten borders, hike penalties for those who hire illegals and give many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants a pathway to legal status.
The Senate voted 51-46 to reject a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar criminals - including those ordered by judges to be deported - from gaining legal status. Democrats siphoned support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption, 66-32, of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and *** offenders, from gaining legalization.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alone among his party's presidential aspirants in backing the immigration measure, opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
Senators also rejected a proposal by Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that would have delayed the bill's shift in favor of attracting foreign workers with needed skills as opposed to keeping families together. Menendez won 53 votes, seven short of the 60 needed under a Senate procedural rule invoked by his opponents.
Menendez's proposal would have allowed more than 800,000 people who had applied for permanent legal status by the beginning of 2007 to obtain green cards based purely on their family connections - a preference the bill ends for most relatives who got in line after May 2005.
Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary R. Clinton, D-N.Y., fell short in her bid to remove limits on visas for the spouses and minor children of immigrants with permanent resident status.
While several Cornyn amendments failed, he prevailed on one matter opposed by the grand bargainers. That amendment, adopted 57 to 39, would make it easier to locate and deport illegal immigrants whose visa applications are rejected.
The bill would have barred law enforcement agencies from seeing applications for so-called Z visas, which can lead to citizenship if granted. Cornyn said legal authorities should know if applicants have criminal records that would warrant their deportation.
Opponents said eligible applicants might be afraid to file applications if they believe they are connected to deportation actions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an interview that Cornyn's amendment was "not a deal-killer" but would have to be changed in House-Senate negotiations.
WASHINGTON "” A proposed immigration overhaul survived a stiff challenge Wednesday as the Senate turned back a Democrat's bid to emphasize reuniting families more than job skills for many foreigners seeking to move to the U.S.
Supporters of bipartisan compromise for legalizing 12 million unlawful immigrants invoked rules effectively requiring an amendment to win 60 votes to keep their delicate coalition from crumbling.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., got 53 votes for his effort to delay shifting U.S. immigration policy away from keeping families together in favor of attracting more foreign workers. But that was seven votes short of the 60 needed. Voting against him were 44 senators.
The Menendez amendment would have allowed more than 800,000 people who had applied for permanent legal status by the beginning of 2007 to obtain green cards based purely on their family connections "” a preference the bill ends for most relatives who got in line after May 2005.
Menendez, whose parents were Cuban immigrants, told his colleagues that the bill will undermine "the reunification of families." Meanwhile, critics of the bill's main feature "” legalizing the estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. unlawfully "” won an amendment that could make it easier to locate and deport illegal immigrants whose visa applications are rejected.
The bill would have barred law-enforcement agencies from seeing applications for Z visas, which can lead to citizenship if granted. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called for lifting the ban, saying authorities should know if applicants' criminal records warrant deportation. His measure passed, 57-39.
Cornyn earlier lost a vote to bar from legalization people under court orders to be deported. The vote was 51-46 against the amendment.
Democrats succeeded in pulling support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals from gaining legalization. The Senate backed that amendment 66-32.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
McCain was joined in opposing the amendment by the Senate's four Democratic presidential hopefuls, Joseph Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, and Barack Obama of Illinois. Cornyn said those who voted against the proposal "failed to take an opportunity to help restore public confidence that we're actually serious about passing an immigration law that could actually work."
Many Americans will conclude instead that the bill's enforcement provisions will not be rigorously enforced, which deeply undermined a 1986 immigration overhaul, he added.
Lobbying to legalize certain prized foreign workers threatens bill
By Charles Babington The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.07.2007
WASHINGTON "” Waves of immigrants, scorned by many people, are so valued by U.S. business that the competition for them threatens the fragile immigration compromise in Congress. With the government bent on tightening U.S. borders and workplace regulations, competing business interests are lobbying Congress to legalize the foreign-born workers they most need, even if it means hurting other sectors.
Industries that need highly skilled, well-educated workers are pitted against those that want lower-wage, minimally skilled employees. All of them are jealously eyeing the agriculture sector, whose powerful lobby secured a separate "AgJobs" bill likely to provide ample numbers of immigrant farm workers for decades to come.
"Other than the ag guys, who are taken care of, I don't think you could contact any constituency in the business community but they'd find a problem" with the Senate bill, said R. Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's top lobbyist.
The chamber supports the bill as the best available compromise, Josten said, but the infighting among various corporate interests underscores its precarious status. "It's divisive in the Republican base, it's divisive in the Democratic base, it's divisive in the business community. It splits organized labor, it splits the immigration community," Josten said.
Bias against workers
The chamber and other broadly based trade groups have tried to keep their constituents in line. They say a flawed compromise is preferable to doing nothing to revise a system of leaky borders that has resulted in an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country. Some key business sectors have balked.
The National Association of Home Builders, whose members employ many thousands of immigrant workers, says the bill could endanger employers who unwittingly hire illegal immigrants and unfairly limit the number of permanent-resident green cards for low-skill workers needed by many construction crews. "There is a huge prejudice against the kind of immigrants" typically hired by home builders, said Jerry Howard, the association's chief executive officer.
His group refused to join fellow members of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition in endorsing the measure. Those backing the bill include trade groups for hotels, restaurants, landscapers and meat and poultry processors. But even groups that officially support the bill are seeking changes that would help them at the expense of others, a competition that could cripple an already compromised measure that can take only so many hits.
That competition is all the keener because of last week's Senate vote to limit the number of temporary workers entering the country to 200,000 a year, rather than the 400,000 originally proposed.
In the U.S. hotel-motel industry alone, about 300,000 low-wage jobs come open each year, and many cannot be filled without foreign-born workers, said Steve Porter, the Americas president of the Intercontinental Hotels Group. Point system an issue
Porter's company and others will press the House to restore the 400,000 cap, he said. Lawmakers and lobbyists say that's the type of battle that could threaten the Senate-crafted compromise. Moreover, many high-tech and low-tech employers want to amend the Senate bill's proposed point system for determining which immigrants qualify for green cards.
Comparatively low-skill industries say the new system would reduce their supply of immigrant workers by favoring foreign-born applicants with high skill levels and advanced degrees. High-tech employers object because the plan would change an existing feature they like. Currently, they can sponsor individual workers for green cards, which can help them retain valued employees.
The Senate bill would place the green card process largely under the government-run point system, giving employers much less control. The bill's drafters were working to fend off a proposed amendment that would leave the existing green card process largely intact. They said the amendment by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, could destroy the delicate coalition of Democrats and Republicans needed to pass the bill and send it to the House.
But the amendment has powerful backers. The National Association of Manufacturers said in a letter to senators this week: "The Cantwell-Cornyn amendment retains employers' flexibility in selecting the workers and determining the skill sets needed to remain competitive."
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 1st Session (2007)
[b]Vote Date Question Result Description/b]
00204 07-Jun S. 1348 On the Cloture Motion Rejected Motion to Invoke Cloture on S. 1348; Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
00203 07-Jun S. 1348 On the Cloture Motion S.Amdt. 1150 Rejected Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Kennedy Amdt. No. 1150, As Amended; In the nature of a substitute.
00202 07-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1311 Rejected Coburn Amdt. No. 1311, As Modified; To require the enforcement of existing border security and immigration laws and Congressional approval before amnesty can be granted.
00201 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1316 Agreed to Dorgan Amdt. No. 1316; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-yer period.
00200 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1202 Rejected Obama Amdt. No. 1202, As Modified; To provide a date on which the authority of the section relating to the increasing of American competitiveness through a merit-based evaluation system for immigrants shall be terminated.
00199 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1339 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1339; To require that the U.S. VISIT system- the biometric border check-in/check-out system first required by Congress in 1996 that is already well past its already postponed 2005 implementation due date- be finished as part of the enforcement trigger.
00198 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1151 Agreed to Inhofe Amdt. No. 1151; To amend title 4, United States Code, to declare English as the national language of the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.
00197 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1384 Agreed to Salazar Amdt. No. 1384; To preserve and enhance the role of the English language.
00196 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1374 Rejected Ensign Amdt. No. 1374; To improve the criteria and weights of the merit-based evaluation system.
00195 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1183 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Clinton Amdt. No. 1183, As Further Modified; To reclassify the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives.
00194 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1460 Agreed to Kyl Amdt. No. 1460; To modify the allocation of visas with respect to the backlog of family-based visa petitions.
00193 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Motion S.Amdt. 1194 Rejected Motion to Waive CBA Re: Menendez Amdt. No 1194; To modify the deadline for the family backlog reduction.
00192 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1234 Agreed to Sessions Amdt. No. 1234; To save American taxpayers up to $24 billion in the 10 years after passage of this Act, by preventing the earned income tax credit, which is, according to the Congressional Research Service, the largest anti-poverty entitlement program of the Federal Government, from being claimed by Y temporary workers or illegal aliens given status by this Act until they adjust to legal permanent resident status.
00191 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1331 Agreed to Reid Amdt. No. 1331; To clarify the application of the earned income tax credit.
00190 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1250 Agreed to Cornyn Amdt. No. 1250; To address documentation of employment and to make an amendment with respect to mandatory disclosure of information
00189 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1267 Rejected Bingaman Amdt. No. 1267 As Modified; To remove the requirement that Y-1 nonimmigrant visa holders leave the United States before they are able to renew their visa.
00188 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1197 Rejected DeMint Amdt. No. 1197; To require health care coverage for holders of Z nonimmigrant visas.
00187 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1184 Rejected Cornyn Amdt. No. 1184, As Modified; To establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and other criminals.
00186 06-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1333 Agreed to Kennedy Amdt. No. 1333, as Modified; To increase the immigration-related penalties associated with various criminal activities
00185 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1176 Agreed to Feingold Amdt. No. 1176; To establish commissions to review the facts and circumstances surrounding injustices suffered by European Americans, European Latin Americans, and Jewish refugees during World War II.
00184 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1170 Rejected McConnell Amdt. No. 1170; To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require individuals voting in person to present photo identification.
00183 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1231 Agreed to Durbin Amdt. No. 1231; To ensure that employers make efforts to recruit American workers.
00182 05-Jun S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1189 Rejected Allard Amdt. No. 1189; To eliminate the preference given to people who entered the United States illegally over people seeking to enter the country legally in the merit-based evaluation system for visas.
___________________________________________ 00180 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship program.
00180 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1157 Rejected Vitter Amdt. No. 1157; To strike title VI (related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status).
00179 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1223 Agreed to Sanders Amdt. No. 1223; To establish the American Competitiveness Scholarship Program.
00178 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1181 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1181; To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-year period.
00177 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1158 Rejected Coleman Amdt. No. 1158; To amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to facilitate information sharing between federal and local law enforcement officials related to an individual's immigration status.
00176 24-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1186 Agreed to Akaka Amdt. No. 1186; To exempt children of certain Filipino World War II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas.
00175 23-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1169 Agreed to Bingaman Amdt. No. 1169; To reduce to 200,000 the number of certain non-immigrants permitted to be admitted during a fiscal year.
00174 22-May S. 1348 On the Amendment S.Amdt. 1153 Rejected Dorgan Amdt. No. 1153; To strike the Y nonimmigrant guestworker program.
00173 21-May S. 1348 On the Cloture Motion Agreed to Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Consider S.1348; Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
'Silent Amnesty': Where the Hard Right Goes Soft on Immigration
By LAWRENCE DOWNES Published: June 7, 2007 All right, seal the border. Then what?
Senator John McCain has been putting the question to the right-wing critics who have attacked the Senate's immigration bill as a ****able amnesty for illegal aliens. He is aiming mostly at Mitt Romney, his Republican presidential rival, but he could be speaking to anyone in the large, loud chorus of conservatives who are so furious about the immigration compromise they could spit.
It's a perfectly reasonable question. Once we lock down the southern border, we lock ourselves in with 12 million illegal immigrants. Let's assume we don't want to deport them all, with a forced-resettlement program big enough to empty the state of Ohio. If we don't want another Trail of Tears and don't want anybody legalized, we will have to get rid of these people some other way.
This is where the rigor of the right turns to mush. Mr. Romney talks as tough as anyone about securing the borders and despising amnesty. He is proud of the way he tried to heap layers of misery on illegal immigrants when he was governor of Massachusetts. He calls the legalization provisions of the Senate bill utterly unacceptable. But he has laid out no alternative.
At Tuesday night's Republican debate, Mr. Romney had a perfect opportunity to respond to the charge that he has been pandering for votes while offering no solution other than doing nothing, which Mr. McCain memorably condemns as "silent amnesty." Check the transcript: Mr. Romney had no rebuttal.
If anyone ought to have thought this through, it would be Representative Tom Tancredo, who is running for president as an immigration zealot. He says he hates the bill so much he wants to unseat any senator who votes for it. But his tough talk on Tuesday was almost as fuzzy as Mr. Romney's. His campaign Web site devotes a scant two paragraphs to immigration policy. Take away the quotation from Theodore Roosevelt, and you have just one paragraph, with a single prescriptive sentence: "The only realistic solution to the problem of illegal immigration is a strategy of attrition, which seeks to reduce the flow of the illegal alien population over time by cutting off the incentive for coming to and staying in America "” most importantly by eliminating the jobs magnet."
Attrition is the restrictionists' fallback plan, a wishful equation that with enough enforcement, mass deportation will happen by itself: Misery plus time equals no more illegals. Small-bore ideologues in places like Hazleton, Pa., and Suffolk County, N.Y., have bought into this approach, adding layer on layer of hostile legislation to drive people out.
The price of this strategy is high "” far more government intrusion into daily lives, with exponential increases in workplace raids, detentions and deportations; continual ID checks for everyone, citizen or not; immigration police at the federal, state, county and local levels; bureaucrats and snoops keeping an eye on landlords, renters, laborers, loiterers and everyone who uses government services or gets sick. The strain on agriculture and service industries would be devastating. And all the things that everyone agrees are the perversities of the status quo "” exploited workers, depressed wages, a huge undocumented population within our borders "” would persist for an indefinite period until the last illegal immigrant goes home.
The make-'em-suffer, wait-'em-out tactic is shockingly passive. It's a far cry from the comprehensive reform that Mr. McCain supports, which would move decisively to extend a web of lawfulness over the shadow population, signing people up for visas, doing background checks, extracting fines and back taxes and imposing other conditions. Poll after poll shows the American public supporting this assertive, fair-minded approach. But the amnesty-never hard-liners seem determined to drown them out.
Maybe this country can make undocumented life so miserable as to extinguish all hope in an immigrant's heart. Maybe it can impose and enforce laws with such rigidity as to make America a beacon of hopelessness. But as an immigration policy, it's hard not to see that as delusional. As an expression of American ideals, it's repulsive.
After years of inconclusive posturing and negotiation, Congress is finally getting serious about a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. The Senate proposal under consideration, to its credit, deals with all three crucial elements of the immigration policy challenge: what to do about the illegal immigrants already here (whom no one honestly believes we would ever deport); how we might secure the border and stem future illegal entry; and whom we should admit in the future.
The bill is a decidedly mixed bag, however, with elements that are good, very good and downright ugly. Unfortunately, the ugly element may fatally outweigh the rest.
First, the good: The proposed legislation's convoluted path to legal status for the country's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants is probably the best compromise to be achieved between the adamant proponents and opponents of "amnesty." It is essential that all immigrants who are permitted to stay actually become members of American society. The legalization provisions, however imperfect, are better than the status quo. More good: On border security, the proposed bill would focus primarily on an electronically supported implementation of employer sanctions. This makes real sense, because employer sanctions have always been a far more effective means of stopping illegal immigration in its tracks than border guards or fences. Those who claim that employer sanctions haven't worked are unaware that they have never been seriously tried. If we mean it this time, employer sanctions will work.
Second, the very good:Second, The most commendable aspect of the bill is its retreat from family sponsorship"”indeed any form of sponsorship"”as the only basis for admitting immigrants, in favor of a merit-based point system. The point system is predicated on self-sponsorship, with bonus points for criteria well within the ability of most potential immigrants to meet: English language proficiency, modest levels of education and a set of specific skills. Of all aspects of the current proposal, this is the most far-reaching and creative, because the current family and employer sponsorship system is seriously flawed, at war with our immigration heritage and a major contributor to illegal entry.
Because it sets aside "family reunification," this provision is being vehemently attacked by supposed immigration "liberals" as being cruel and unfair. They have it backward; it is the current system that is cruel and unfair, and it was designed to be that way. It was instituted in the 1920s for only one deplorable purpose -- to keep out the growing number of immigrants from "undesirable" countries, then meaning those from southern and eastern Europe. The family sponsorship criteria that immigration advocates so cherish were designed not out of concern for family values at all, but to skew the immigrant mix toward nationalities already here.
As it happens, by the time the U.S. expanded its quotas after 1965, Europeans were less interested in coming, and Mexicans and other Latin Americans had secured enough of a demographic foothold to give the family sponsorship feature a decided Latino tilt. But family sponsorship is also profoundly unfair, and a major spur to illegal entry, because most potential immigrants"”even from Mexico"”do not have close American relatives.
In any case, the immigration reform bill's deleterious impact on families would be minimal, because it sets aside enough slots to finally clear the entire backlog of current family-sponsored applicants, and would allow point-based admittees to bring their close relatives with them.
Now the ugly: The most ill-conceived element of the Senate bill is its provision for admitting hundreds of thousands of temporary, or "guest," workers. As many critics have already noted, since it is unlikely that all, or even a majority, of temporary workers would actually return to their native countries when their visas expired, the guest-worker mechanism means that we can readily anticipate the next wave of illegal residents"”and is unlikely that we will ever again entertain any kind of post hoc residency legitimation.
But even if all temporary workers went back home after their allotted stay ended, the notion of inviting millions of new immigrants to live in American communities with no possibility of their ever becoming Americans is an affront to our civic and immigration heritage. (The current legislation is quite clear that neither extended stays nor citizenship will be options for temporary workers.) Can our civil society"”so grounded in the notions of assimilation and civic participation by all Americans"” tolerate an army of permanent aliens in our midst? I believe not.
Western Europe's experiment with foreign labor recruitment in the 1960s and 1970s, under various guest-worker rubrics, should give us pause. While the individual nations' policies varied widely, they all shared with the Senate proposal two expectations: that imported laborers would not stay very long, and that they would not assimilate into the national social fabric.
True enough, the guest workers in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia did not assimilate; but the majority have stayed, legally and illegally, residing in alienated economic and cultural enclaves, resentful of and resented by their unwelcoming host citizenry. If we are determined to replicate Western Europe's four decade old guest-worker experiment, we may soon reap the same civil discord it is experiencing today.
The temporary-worker provision has been included in the reform package supposedly at the behest of employers, especially those needing unskilled workers in agriculture and services. But if employers across America really need a larger labor force, this result could easily be achieved under the new point-based quota system. The quota could be enlarged by precisely the number of visas that the bill allots to temporary workers, and under the bill's Labor Department certification provisions, its criteria could be broadened to encompass the kinds of low-skill occupations that temporary workers would presumably fill. But the bedrock principle that must be sustained is that all who come to America must have the potential to become Americans.
As with all compromise legislation, no interest group, policy wonk (like myself), or partisan position gets everything it wants. There is now such a hunger for immigration reform across the policy spectrum that, regardless of our specific misgivings, we are all being asked to take the ugly along with the good and very good. But at this point I feel so strongly that the "guest worker" provision would be catastrophic that I would rather wait for a better bill without it.
--- Mr. Salins, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, is the author of "Assimilation, American Style" (Basic Books, 1997).
Senate Blocks Final Vote on Immigration Reform Bill Thursday, June 07, 2007
WASHINGTON "” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hoped to hold a second test vote Thursday afternoon, vowing to try to get an immigration reform bill through the Senate despite a morning vote that failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate and get to final passage.
Republicans stuck together to block an end to debate, 33-63. They opposed the measure because it would have prevented Republican amendments from being offered.
"It's certainly not my goal to not get this bill to passage, provided we have fair treatment on this side of the aisle," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
"If we can't do this then we ought to vote to dissolve the Congress and go home till a new Congress," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who added that he's getting calls from constituents upset that Congress can't pass an immigration reform bill.
Reid said he too did not want to give up on compromise legislation. "This is a bill that we have pushed it down the road a long ways, and I hope we can finish it," he said on the Senate floor before the morning vote.
Some senators are holding out hope that they can save the bill after it barely survived a deal-breaking challenge in an overnight vote. The legislation would address the 12 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, temporary workers and border security.
(Story continues below)
Advertise Here Advertisements RelatedStories Immigration Reform Bill Survives Challenge in Senate New Haven, Conn., OKs ID Cards for Illegal Immigrants Governor Schwarzenegger Calls Bush 'Courageous' for Immigration Plan Finger-Pointing Signals Trouble for Senate Immigration Bill Judge Stops Ban That Would Forbid Apartment Rentals to Illegal Immigrants Senate to Vote on GOP Proposal to Make it Harder for Illegal Immigrants to Get Green Cards GOP White House Hopeful Tancredo to Target Republicans on Immigration Congress Returns to Immigration Debate Bush Urges Congress to Pass Immigration Reform Bill A FOX News poll finds that Americans think it would be better to enforce current immigration laws instead of an overhaul.
A 58 percent majority says the United States needs to enforce the current laws, while 34 percent think the country's immigration laws need to be completely overhauled.
Click here to read more about the poll.
The so-called "grand bargainers" who put the compromise legislation together met early Thursday morning for a last-ditch effort to pull it together. Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., aim to craft a compromise after the Senate voted early Thursday to sunset the temporary worker program after five years.
Kennedy allowed the amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., which had already been defeated once, to come up again for debate on the Senate floor after a minor change and some arm-twisting to convince one fellow Democrat to change his vote and support of the provision.
The Senate voted 49-48 to pass Dorgan's amendment.
Republican supporters see the temporary worker program, supported by business groups, as crucial to keeping the deal alive. Democratic critics like Dorgan said an open-ended program would drive down American workers' wages or take jobs away from Americans.
Aides say negotiators are working to alter the Dorgan amendment to satisfy both sides. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he or his allies would slightly re-word Dorgan's amendment and hope for a change of heart by one or more senators who "don't want to kill the bill."
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a vocal opponent of the legislation said the proposed temporary guest worker program only delays the continuing influx of illegals because immigrants will continue to arrive illegally after their short-term Z-visas expire following two-year work terms.
"This bill fails the essential test of our criminal judgment system. When we're looking at what the appropriate punishment is for people who violated laws, one of the goals is to deter future individuals from violating those laws. Instead of deterrence, this bill provides a huge magnet," he said.
The bill, backed by President Bush, survived many challenges on Wednesday.
One amendment would have postponed the bill's shift to an emphasis on education and skills among visa applicants as opposed to family connections. The other, offered by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would have ended a new point system for those seeking permanent resident "green cards" after five years rather than 14 years.
Along with the Dorgan amendment, the other two were seen as potentially fatal blows to the fragile coalition backing the bill, which remains under attack from the right and left. The bill would tighten borders, hike penalties for those who hire illegals and give many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants a pathway to legal status.
While the Dorgan amendment marked the biggest setback for the bill's advocates, there were others. They failed to defeat a Republican proposal to give law enforcement agents access to rejected visa applications, which could lead to the arrest and deportation of some illegal immigrants who otherwise might escape detection.
They also failed, by a 64-33 vote, to block a provision by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., making English "the national language." Opponents called the measure demeaning and said they would try to kill it during House-Senate negotiations.
The Senate voted 51-46 to reject a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar criminals "” including those ordered by judges to be deported "” from gaining legal status. Democrats siphoned support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and *** offenders, from gaining legalization. The Senate backed that amendment 66-32.
The Senate also rejected a proposal by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that bill supporters called a "killer amendment." It would have delayed the bill's shift in favor of attracting foreign workers with needed skills as opposed to keeping families together. Menendez won 53 votes, seven short of the 60 needed under a Senate procedural rule invoked by his opponents.
Menendez's proposal would have allowed more than 800,000 people who had applied for permanent legal status by the beginning of 2007 to obtain green cards based purely on their family connections "” a preference the bill ends for most relatives who got in line after May 2005.
Kyl, a chief advocate of the bill, said most of the visa applicants Menendez wanted to help are so far back in line that it would be decades before the Homeland Security Department could process them. The Senate adopted Kyl's alternative, which would retain the family preference status for applicants who might win approval by 2026 under the department's projections.
Menendez, whose parents were Cuban immigrants, called the Kyl amendment "a fig leaf" that would make no meaningful change to the bill.
Presidential contenders featured prominently in the day's debates. Sen. Hillary R. Clinton, D-N.Y., fell short in her bid to remove limits on visas for the spouses and minor children of immigrants with permanent resident status.
Obama called the green card point system a risky "experiment in social engineering."
Cornyn had painted his criminals amendment as a "defining issue" for any presidential candidate "” a sign of the degree to which the contentious debate is bleeding over into the GOP campaign fray.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alone among his party's presidential aspirants in backing the immigration measure, opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative offered by Kennedy.
McCain was joined in opposing the amendment by the Senate's four Democratic presidential hopefuls: Obama, Clinton, Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
Cornyn prevailed on another matter opposed by the grand bargainers, however. His amendment, adopted 57 to 39, would make it easier to locate and deport illegal immigrants whose visa applications are rejected.
The bill would have barred law enforcement agencies from seeing applications for so-called Z visas, which can lead to citizenship if granted. Cornyn said legal authorities should know if applicants have criminal records that would warrant their deportation.
Opponents said eligible applicants might be afraid to file applications if they believe they are connected to deportation actions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an interview that Cornyn's amendment was "not a deal-killer" but would have to be changed in House-Senate negotiations.
Other amendments defeated Wednesday included a Democratic effort to alter the temporary guest worker program that would be created by the bill.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico wanted to allow workers to come for six consecutive years. The Senate voted 57-41 to reject the amendment, retaining the bill's call for most guest workers to go home for a year between each of three two-year stints.
The Senate also rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to change the Z visa program whereby illegal immigrants could gain lawful status. DeMint proposed requiring them to buy high-deductible health plans to be eligible for visas.
FOX News' Trish Turner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
New Haven, Conn., OKs ID Cards for illegal Immigrants
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Conn. "” City officials have approved a plan to offer illegal immigrants identification cards that would let them open bank accounts and use other services that may be unavailable without driver's licenses or state-issued IDs.
Supporters say the program, approved by the Board of Aldermen and believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will help safeguard the city's estimated 15,000 illegal immigrants. If they can open bank accounts, immigrants will be less likely to carry large amounts of cash, a practice that makes them easy targets for robbers.
Monday's approval stands in contrast to new laws or proposals in more than 90 cities or counties around the nation prohibiting landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ them or training police to enforce immigration laws.
New Haven, a city of about 125,000 and home to Yale University, already offers federal tax help to immigrants and prohibits police from asking about their immigration status.
"It was really a vote that reflected our values as a community here in New Haven, values of hard work, values of acceptance, and values that we get tough things done when we work together," Mayor John DeStefano said Tuesday.
Fed-Sponsored Program Allows Immigrants Without Social Security Numbers to Wire Money Home Cheap
Bank of America Won't Cancel Controversial Credit Card Program
GOP Lawmakers Peeved at New Bank of America Credit Card Program The aldermen agreed to accept $250,000 from a private foundation to pay for the cards that will serve as identification within city limits. The cards will be available to all residents, and can also be used to get library cards or pay for downtown parking meters.
The cards should be available in July, at a cost of $5 for children and $10 for adults.
Approval of the new IDs was good news for immigrants like Miguel Cienfuendes, whose brother was stabbed to death in a robbery last fall. Cienfuendes, who moved to New Haven from Mexico, lives in fear of being robbed.
"I don't walk the streets any more," Cienfuendes said recently, speaking through an interpreter. "Where we live it's scary. We don't know when they are going to come after us thinking we have money."
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, said the cards were largely symbolic. Most illegal immigrants who want bank accounts or need city services have probably already found ways to get them, he said.
"It seems like the main thing that's going on here is really just a statement by the city that it wishes to subvert U.S. immigration law with a largely meaningless gesture for illegals," he said.
Yale law professor Michael Wishnie said the ID cards will help illegal immigrants participate more in civic life. They do not entitle immigrants to special treatment, he said.
"They're simply saying if you're already eligible for something, like a bank account or a library card, and this will help you get the thing you're already eligible for, then we'll facilitate it," he said.
Wishnie said he does not believe the federal government will try to use the new cards to target or track New Haven's illegal immigrants.
"There is no guarantee, but there are several reasons why I'm not concerned," he said.
Even if the government did request records from the New Haven ID program, they would probably not be particularly useful, he said. The IDs will not distinguish between citizens and illegal immigrants, and only about a third of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are likely to show up in any type of government database.
Careful Strategy Is Used to Derail Immigration Bill
By Shailagh Murray Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 8, 2007; Page A04
Two weeks ago, when the immigration bill landed on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) voted against an amendment that targeted one of its key provisions: a guest-worker program that President Bush and many U.S. companies have sought for years.
Shortly after midnight yesterday, DeMint returned to the floor and, along with three conservative Republican colleagues, voted in favor of the same measure he had opposed, to sunset the program after five years. Not that DeMint has anything against guest workers. He supports the idea. But weakening the guest-worker program would leave the bill in tatters -- and in the twisted logic of the Senate, that served DeMint's greater goal of derailing the legislation.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C) and others helped kill the immigration bill. (Perry Baker - AP)
"If it hurts the bill, I'm for it," DeMint explained matter-of-factly.
The early-morning vote shocked members of the bipartisan coalition who have struggled to pass an immigration bill, one of the most complex and controversial that Congress has tackled in years. Leaders in both parties condemned the GOP switchers for conspiring to sabotage legislation that had taken countless delicate negotiating sessions to craft. And that was exactly the intent. The four new votes were the result of an aggressive last-minute lobbying campaign by the legislation's Democratic and Republican critics.
"I'm embarrassed to say they were trying to kill the bill, and I'm ashamed of it," Republican Whip Trent Lott (Miss.) said of DeMint and his associates. He fumed that the senators had voted against their principles and on an amendment offered by Democrats, no less.
But that's the Senate, where tactical voting is par for the course, and where a single disgruntled lawmaker -- or, in this case, four -- can run even the most artful compromise aground. And that was the ultimate effect of their vote, leading to the legislation's demise last night.
The debate also underscores the limits of party loyalty when a red-hot issue is at stake -- especially for Republicans, given Bush's poor standing in the polls. Changing the nation's immigration laws to expand the workforce, tighten enforcement and bring order to the chaos of a vast illegal population has been a priority for Bush since he took office. Many GOP lawmakers also support the overall cause. But one key provision -- a path to citizenship for undocumented workers -- has unleashed a vehement reaction among conservatives, who believe the immigration system broke down long ago. Given the administration's weak response, DeMint said, Republicans do not have the political credibility to argue back.
"I think Republicans are trying to solve a real problem. I think the president is, too," DeMint said. "But the American people don't trust us."
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) does not like the immigration bill, either, but for entirely different reasons. Echoing the concerns of labor unions, he argues that the guest-worker program would depress wages and lead to foreigners taking good jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. citizens.
When the debate started late last month, Dorgan offered two amendments: one to kill the guest-worker program, and a second to water down the program to make it more acceptable to unions, by ending it after five years. The first failed by a large margin. But the second measure was defeated 49 to 48.
To close the gap, Dorgan and a GOP ally, Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), looked to Republicans who had voted against the sunset amendment two weeks ago but who were known to have qualms about the bill itself. The target list included five senators from states with illegal-immigration problems, or where the issue had a particular potency with conservative voters. Along with DeMint, the list named Sens. Jim Bunning (Ky.), Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.). Dole and Enzi face reelection next year.
After conversations with Dorgan and among themselves, four of the five decided to support Dorgan's late-night second effort. Moments before the vote, Republican leaders succeeded in talking Grassley back to their side.
DeMint hurried into the chamber around 12:15 a.m., voted yes on the sunset amendment, and then hurried home to bed. He did not realize it had passed until he returned to the office in the morning.
Pressed by reporters to explain his switch, Bunning at first referred to unspecified changes that Dorgan had made at his behest, then conceded that he had grander ambitions. "I've been trying to kill [the bill] since the beginning," Bunning said.
Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel said his boss gave additional thought to the Dorgan amendment after the first vote and determined that supporting it was effectively "a vote against amnesty."
Dole said she changed her mind after a GOP-led bid to strike the "amnesty," or legalization, section gained just 29 votes. Instead, she would try to defeat the bill by weakening one of its popular provisions, the guest-worker program. "That was the intent," Dole said, "because we had not been able to strip the amnesty out."
Dorgan said he was "pleasantly surprised" by the outcome, another 49 to 48 vote, this time in his favor (several senators had switched in the other direction, to try to save the bill). He insisted that he never viewed the amendment as a poison pill, but rather as an attempt to keep the guest-worker program in check.
But the conservatives, he confessed, did not take much prodding. "It's like the loose thread on the cheap sweater," Dorgan said. "You start pulling and the sleeve comes off."
Arrests of 31 in U.S. Sweep Bring Fear in New Haven
By JENNIFER MEDINA Published: June 8, 2007
NEW HAVEN, June 7 "” Over the last several years, this city has gone to great lengths to turn itself into a kind of haven, quite literally, for illegal immigrants. It was not that new immigrants were pouring in, but that there were thousands already living here, and the officials who have long run the city wanted to bring them out of the shadows.
Douglas Healey for The New York Times Immigrants and their advocates met Thursday outside a church in New Haven. The police adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for dealing with immigrants, and the mayor backed a plan for municipal identification cards. Within the borders of this liberal college town, there was hardly a whiff of opposition.
But starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday, two days after the Board of Aldermen overwhelmingly approved the identity card plan, federal agents swept into the largely Hispanic Fair Haven community and arrested some 31 people suspected of being illegal immigrants, many in their homes.
Within hours, any sense of sanctuary that the city and advocates for immigrants advocates had developed over the years was turned upside down, replaced with fear.
"There is truly no safe haven for fugitive aliens," said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that conducted the raid.
Afterward, local officials' cellphones lighted up with dozens of frantic phone calls from residents and community leaders saying that people were missing. There were rumors of a mass arrest at a supermarket. Fair Haven resembled a ghost town, with residents huddling inside their houses, afraid that they, too, could be arrested at any moment.
"At 10 in the morning, the streets were just empty," said John Lugo, an organizer for Unidad Latina en Acción, an advocacy group. "People were really very afraid all of the sudden. They still are. They think it will happen again."
On Wednesday, Mr. Lugo and others passed out hundreds of fliers outlining immigrants' rights, instructing them not to give federal authorities any information without a lawyer present and advising them to not answer their doors.
Mayor John DeStefano and other city leaders angrily accused the federal government of "terrorizing" the immigrant community. Many of them speculated that the mass arrests "” the first of their kind in recent memory here "” were retaliation for the acceptance of municipal identification cards and other immigrant-friendly city policies.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials emphatically denied that charge, saying that the arrests had been planned since April. (The identity-card program, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, was first suggested by Mr. DeStefano in 2005.)
The details of the arrests are still somewhat unclear. Federal officials said that they were "targeting fugitives," not conducting a widespread sweep. Twenty nine men and two women "” most of them from Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Guinea and Ecuador "” were arrested. City officials said on Thursday that of the 16 arrest warrants the federal agents had, only four were executed, meaning that most of the 31 arrested were swept up in what they called a dragnet, and that 12 people the federal officials were looking for remained at large.
Lawyers and advocates for immigrants who interviewed several relatives of those who were arrested said that in most cases, the immigration officials knocked on their doors and demanded to speak with every adult in the house, then asked for identification.
In several instances, they said, the agents separated the men from the women and asked which of the women had children. Those who did were left behind, while those who did not were taken into custody, the advocates said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have conducted hundreds of similar sweeps in the last year. In 2006, a spokesman said, they deported more than 221,000 illegal immigrants, many of them after proceedings that began with such arrests. Last fall, an operation in Danbury led to the arrest of 11 men who worked at a local factory.
Immigration advocates in Connecticut were fond of referring to Danbury and New Haven as two poles on the spectrum "” the same immigrants who were shunned in the former were welcomed in the latter.
Like many other local leaders, Mayor DeStefano said he had to deal with the practical reality of illegal immigrants, rather than spend his time worrying about proposals to revamp the federal immigration system. But while some mayors were cracking down on housing codes and loitering laws to discourage illegal immigrants from getting too comfortable, Mr. DeStefano said he was more concerned about public safety for the 10,000 of them estimated to live in his city of 125,000.
That was how the identification cards were supposed to help: by giving immigrants an official document that could be used in banks, rather than having to carry hundreds of dollars in cash, which made them targets for theft.
Above all, Mr. DeStefano said, immigrants should feel comfortable contacting the police and receiving basic city services. And when the city's aldermen approved the plan on Monday night, advocates hailed it as a model for other municipalities.
"We've gotten to the point where the community trusts the city and trusts the police," said Kica Matos, the city's community services administrator, who spearheaded the identification card plan.
The arrests on Wednesday, she said, have the potential to reverse much of that.
The city still plans to begin issuing the identification cards early next month. Several community leaders said that the immigrants' arrests had outraged many residents, and that more would be likely to obtain the cards as a sign of solidarity.
But what about immigrants themselves?
"I don't know the answer to that question," Mr. DeStefano said in an interview Thursday. "But we cannot get to a point where people are driven underground."
As his thoughts turned to the current immigration debate in Congress, Mr. DeStefano sounded a bit resigned.
"They'll do whatever they are going to do, but my job is to deal with the situation here," he said.
"People aren't going to come here for a piece of plastic, they are going to come here for jobs and because the federal government lets them come here. The law is only enforced episodically. Yesterday was our day."
By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR Published: June 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 7 "”The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush crumbled in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration's chief domestic priorities in serious doubt.
Times Topics: Immigration and Refugees After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained that they had not been given enough opportunity to reshape the sprawling bill. Supporters of cutting off debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff.
"We are finished with this for the time being," said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, as he turned the Senate to work on energy legislation.
Mr. Reid did, however, leave the door open to revisiting the immigration issue later this year and said he would continue to explore ways to advance a plan. "We all have to work, the president included, to find a way to get this bill passed," he said.
The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the proposal in the hope of claiming it as a major domestic policy achievement in the last months of his administration.
The collapse of the measure came as Mr. Bush was in Europe for an international economic summit, and it was not immediately clear how hard he would fight to resurrect the bill upon his return next week.
Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said the White House still held hope that a bill could be passed.
"We are encouraged that the leadership of both parties in the United States Senate indicated that they would bring this legislation back up for consideration," Mr. Stanzel said. "And we will continue to work with members of the United States Senate to make sure this process moves forward."
The defeat was also crushing for a bipartisan group of about a dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.
"The vote was obviously a big disappointment, but it makes no sense to fold our tent, and I certainly don't intend to," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a chief author of the bill. "Doing nothing is totally unacceptable"
Other proponents said they still saw life in the legislation despite the blow in the Senate.
"This matter is on life support, but it is not dead," said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and another central architect of the plan.
Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying it rewarded those who broke the law by entering the country illegally. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and drew support for their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.
"I simply do not understand why some of my colleagues want to jam this legislation through the Congress without a serious and thorough examination of its consequences," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who was another leading opponent, said he believed lawmakers responded to constituent complaints about the flaws in the measure "I was not going to support a piece of legislation that will not work," Mr. Sessions said.
Mr. Reid said the critics were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. Noting the Senate had considered more than 40 amendments and held 28 roll call votes, he attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.
In the end, 38 Republicans, 11 Democrats and one independent voted not to shut off debate; 37 Democrats, 7 Republicans and one independent voted to bring the issue to a head.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he believed Republicans would have eventually relented had they been given more time to work out an agreement on what amendments would be considered. "I think we are giving up on this bill too soon," Mr. McConnell said.
The vote was the second attempt of the day to cut off a debate that had gone on for nearly two weeks, interrupted by the Memorial Day recess. On the initial showdown in the morning, the Senate fell 27 votes short of the 60 required; every Republican and 15 Democrats opposed the move.
The morning vote sent Senate leaders and backers of the legislation scrambling, trying to reach an agreement to salvage the measure with the help of administration officials. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was also consulted by phone
The progress of negotiations was uncertain throughout the day. As late as 6:30 p.m., Mr. Kennedy was still uncertain where many senators stood on the call to force an end to the debate. "It's touch and go," Mr. Kennedy said. "It's extremely close at this time. Republicans have held their cards."
Skip to next paragraph The Vote in the Senate
Times Topics: Immigration and Refugees The compromise legislation was announced on May 17 by authors who hailed it as a "grand bargain." It held together through much of the debate because the negotiators "” embodied on the right by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, and on the left by Mr. Kennedy "” agreed to block proposals they thought would sink the measure. That led to such odd moments as when Mr. Kyl on Wednesday opposed an amendment he had helped write for last year's unsuccessful immigration measure.
But the legislation began running into problems late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning as the Senate approved a Democratic proposal to limit a guest-worker program sought by business interests and backed by Republicans. Backers of the bill hoped to reverse that result if the measure moved forward.
"It is indispensable to have a guest-worker program to take care of the needs of the economy," said Mr. Specter. "If we don't, we will just encounter more people coming over illegally."
At the same time, some Democrats were growing increasingly uneasy.
Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said the bill had become "more punitive and more onerous" because of amendments adopted in the last few days. Mr. Menendez pointed, for example, to one that denied the earned-income tax credit to illegal immigrants who gain legal status under the bill.
Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic rights group, said she had similar concerns. Changes approved by the Senate this week make the bill "not only more punitive, but also less workable," Ms. Muñoz said.
Trying to bolster Democratic support, the Service Employees International Union urged senators Thursday to vote for a limit to the debate. In a letter to the Senate, Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the union, listed many serious objections to the bill, but said, "The time to move forward is now."
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups, also backed cloture, saying, "A small handful of immigration restrictionists' in the Senate should not be allowed to prolong the debate indefinitely."
In addition to the limit on the guest worker program, supporters of the bill said they would also try to change an amendment that gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to certain information in unsuccessful applications filed by illegal immigrants seeking legal status. Despite the strong Republican vote against ending debate, party leaders said throughout the day they wanted to reach some accommodation. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the No. 2 Republican, urged his colleagues to stiffen their spines and try to resolve one of the nation's most pressing problems.
"Are we men and women or mice?" Mr. Lott asked. "Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let's legislate. Let's vote."
Jun 8, 6:42 AM EDT By CHARLES BABINGTON Associated Press Writer
Immigration Bill Fails Test Vote
Deep divisions derail immigration billDeep divisions derail immigration bill Provisions of immigration compromise
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate divisions that derailed a White House-backed immigration bill - for now, at least - mirror the U.S. society's deep differences over the issue, according to polling data, lawmakers and analysts. Those gaps will challenge any effort to get the measure back on track.
While most Senate Democrats appeared to back the bill, several liberal members said it did too little to keep immigrant families together and protect jobs for U.S.-born workers.
The split in the Republican Party was more obvious. The issue pitted social conservatives, who insisted that illegal immigrants not be granted "amnesty" for entering the country unlawfully, against business groups hungry for willing workers in hotels, restaurants, construction sites and other comparatively low-wage, low-skilled workplaces.
A bipartisan group of senators tried for weeks to bridge the chasms, but fell glaringly short Thursday night. Needing 60 votes to end debate and schedule a final vote on the bill itself, they won only 45. Senate leaders set aside the legislation until further notice.
House leaders, meanwhile, said they will not tackle immigration legislation until a Senate bill is completed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he hoped to pass the measure eventually, but he devoted much of his post-vote comments Thursday night to accusing President Bush of doing too little to obtain Republican support. "This the president's bill," Reid told a hushed chamber. "Where are the president's people helping us with these votes?"
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., defended the administration. "The White House has worked like a dog," he told reporters. Indeed, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff lobbied senators inside the Capitol right up until Thursday's showdown vote.
The White House argued the setback was not fatal for Bush's top domestic priority and urged Reid to allow the bill to continue to be debated and eventually receive a vote. Administration officials monitored the developments from Germany where the president was attending the annual summit of world leaders.
"He obviously is disappointed by the setback," White House counselor Dan Bartlett said of Bush. "But based on the latest information we have, there still is a good chance this bill could go forward."
Bartlett said the president did not call any lawmakers from Germany to lobby for the measure.
Whether Bush can revive the legislation may depend largely on whether he can soften some of the differences between key components of his party's base, including the corporate community and social conservatives.
They clashed on matters such as the immigration bill's proposal for a new temporary worker program. Businesses that crave immigrant workers were furious when senators in May set the limit for incoming temporary workers at 200,000 a year instead of the original plan for 400,000. They were even more dismayed when the Senate narrowly voted to end the program altogether after five years.
But slapping tighter limits on immigration is a priority for many conservatives. When it came to the temporary worker program, their interests overlapped with those of pro-labor groups concerned about a flood of low-wage workers.
Top U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist R. Bruce Josten told The Associated Press this week that the immigration issue is "divisive in the Republican base, it's divisive in the Democratic base, it's divisive in the business community. It splits organized labor, it splits the immigration community."
Republican senators who backed the immigration bill felt particularly exposed to fierce attacks from conservative activists in their home states, including talk show hosts and local GOP officials. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in a floor speech Thursday that he disliked many aspects of the bill but felt it would be irresponsible to kill it.
"I am getting calls, but I would say to my constituents: Do you have no faith in me after 35 years that I am just going to buy a pig in a poke here, or be for something that is bad?" Lott said.
In a recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 55 percent of the respondents said penalizing employers who hire illegals is the best way to reduce illegal immigration. One in four said more border agents is the best answer, and 7 percent favored more border fences.
When the word "amnesty" was not invoked, 62 percent of Republicans said they favored letting illegal immigrants now in the country obtain citizenship if they have jobs, pass background checks and pay fines. But only 47 percent of Republicans said they favored giving amnesty to illegal immigrants if they met those same conditions.
Democrats, independents and moderate and liberal Republicans were most concerned about jobs, but conservative Republicans were about equally concerned with jobs and terrorism.
USA Today June 8, 2007 Today's Debate: Illegal Immigration
Our view on illegal immigration: Amnesty? What amnesty? Critics substitute fear for facts
Opponents of the immigration compromise that stalled in the Senate on Thursday night have wield the word "amnesty" like a club, as if repeating it over and over constitutes rational argument.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., displays the word prominently on his presidential campaign website and describes amnesty variously as a "travesty" and a "catastrophe." CNN's Lou Dobbs invokes the word so often (six times in the introduction of his Wednesday broadcast alone) you'd think his anchor seat was under imminent threat from border-jumping TV hosts.
Such is the politics of fear, and if it is deplorable, it is also effective.
Although polls show that most Americans support giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, the bipartisan immigration bill was on life support after Senate leaders pulled it off the floor in the face of relentless opposition. Never mind that what it offers is not amnesty at all. Never mind either that defeating it "” thereby retaining the current system "” means that the 12 million illegal entrants already here will stay. It's fear that counts, not reason.
This is what the critics call amnesty:
Over time, illegal immigrants would have to pay fines and fees of more than $9,000 (plus thousands more for each family member). They'd have to prove they're working and have no significant criminal record. They'd have to learn English and American civics. And, if they want legal permanent residence, they'd have to return to their home country to apply for it there. Getting a green card would take at least eight years, citizenship at least 13.
Some amnesty.
In a perfect world, it might be reasonable to say that everyone here illegally should be deported. Lawbreaking, obviously, cannot be ignored. But if that were possible at all "” which is very dubious "” the cost would run far into the billions.
And for what?
Most immigrants work hard. They came to make better futures for themselves and their families. They have put down roots and are vital to the American economy. Even small crackdowns produce wails from employers who can't find replacement workers.
Ask detractors to stop braying "amnesty" for a minute and offer an alternative, and the response is too often the sort of non-answer Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave during Tuesday's GOP debate on CNN. Romney proposed "to enforce the law that was passed in 1986."
Alas, that ship has sailed. It's simply not feasible to go back two decades to start over "” or to suddenly make it so difficult for illegals to work here that at least 12 million people magically self-deport, leaving restaurants, hotels and millions of small businesses with a crippling labor shortage.
The critics should instead focus their efforts on a more legitimate goal: Making sure this reform includes both the means and the funding to keep millions more illegal immigrants from coming. If the federal government follows through aggressively "” a big if, given the abject failure of the 1986 bill's enforcement provisions "” the nation could get control over its borders and its workplaces.
The time to keep 12 million illegals who are here now out of the country was long ago. Maintaining the status quo is, as Sen. John McCain and others have said, simply a matter of "silent amnesty."
Opposing view: It's 1986 all over again
Amnesty, lax enforcement repeat mistakes of last immigration bill. By David Vitter
In studying the immigration bill that was on the floor of the Senate, my overriding question was: Does it repeat the fatal mistakes of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act? That bill was supposed to solve our illegal immigration problem once and for all. Instead, it quadrupled it "” from more than 3 million illegal aliens in this country then to more than 12 million today.
Why? Two reasons. The '86 bill provided amnesty for millions here illegally and lacked strong enforcement. Those fatal flaws combined to create a magnet for more illegal border crossings with inadequate enforcement to stop them. Unfortunately, the latest bill repeats those fundamental mistakes.
Black's Law Dictionary defines amnesty as a "pardon extended by the government to a group or class of persons, usually for a political offense," and even gives the 1986 act as a textbook example. Again in this year's bill, the federal government would forgive an entire class of lawbreakers with the Z visa provision. As in 1986, they'd have to pay a few fines and take other modest action. But they would never have to leave the country or spend one day in jail.
Supporters of the bill argue that those who came to this country illegally would have to go to the back of the line before they could become citizens. But Z visas make a mockery of that assertion. It's hardly the back of the line to wait in this country and enjoy its benefits, while those at the front of the line wait for years outside our borders.
The current immigration bill has enforcement triggers that must be met before the Z visas are implemented. But this is highly misleading, too, because the triggers include only a fraction of the measures necessary to truly enforce the law. The trigger provisions are completely silent on critical elements, such as ensuring that visa holders leave the country when their visas expire and that we actually detain illegals we find.
In sum, this bill is amnesty with inadequate enforcement. How can we repeat the mistakes of '86 and expect different results?
In 1964, when my grandfather finally legalized his status after nearly 50 years in the USA as an undocumented worker, he met with an El Paso immigration attorney. Based on my grandpa's work history and clean record, his lawyer helped him obtain his papeles "” naturalization papers "” and grandpa became a citizen the following year. The total bill from the lawyer, including government fees, was $35.
I guess life really was easier in the good old days. For on top of the ongoing clamor over the bipartisan immigration proposal, it just got a lot more expensive to become an American.
Last week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released their new fees, which go into effect July 30. The cost for a legal immigrant to become a citizen will rise from $400 to $675, a 69% increase, while the price of a green card will jump from $395 to $1,010, a 156% increase.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, National Association of Latino Elected Officials, National Council of La Raza and American Immigration Lawyers Association all oppose the increases. USCIS, which proceeded anyway, plans to use the fees to upgrade computer systems, hire and train staff, and renovate facilities. Emilio Gonzales, USCIS director, said the increases are not related to the Senate's immigration proposal, which could make 12 million undocumented workers eligible for citizenship. "The reason we're raising the fees is that we need the money," he said.
So as Congress considers get-tough measures on illegal immigration, the government is making things harder for legal immigrants, who are becoming citizens faster than ever. According to the Pew Center, the proportion of legal residents born outside the country who become naturalized citizens rose to 52% in 2005. From 1995 to 2005, Pew found, the number of naturalized citizens from Mexico soared by 144%. Many opponents of the immigration bill say they are not against immigration, just illegal immigration. Yet these fees are certain to become a barrier to citizenship for many legal immigrants.
A minimum-age worker would have to save nearly every cent earned for five weeks to afford a green card, the Associated Press calculates. USCIS, known for long waits and lost files, sorely needs an overhaul. But a promised 20% improvement in service by the end of 2009 hardly seems worth the large fee hikes. Instead, the government should provide funds for additional improvements, just as it does for nearly every other agency. The new fees send the wrong message to people who want to play by the rules and are willing and able to work toward the American dream.
Raul Reyes is an attorney in New York and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
07:40 AM CDT on Friday, June 8, 2007 Dallas Morning News
A legislator is discovered to have $90,000 in alleged bribe money hidden in his home freezer. In the United States, the government prosecutes, courts rule, someone goes to jail and the news media report every step of the process.
Typically around Latin America, the government doesn't prosecute, because part of a politician's job is to steal and get rich in office. The courts look the other way because judges also are on the take. If journalists dare to report it, they're the ones who go to jail for violating the "dignity" of a public official.
We tend to take a free press for granted, but many Latin Americans view the news media as some of the few remaining checks on criminality and corruption. As we noted recently, it's a tragedy when a newspaper such as Mexico's Cambio Sonora closes its doors because of death threats. One reason why Latin America's tyrants and thugs don't want a free press is that reporters, at great personal risk, serve as a major impediment to rampant lawlessness.
If, for example, the incident involving $90,000 found in Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson's freezer instead had occurred in Panama, journalists reporting it could face month of prison time because the law prevents them from disclosing damaging details about the "private lives" of public officials.
In fact, two journalists received 12-month prison terms in 2003 for reporting that two government ministers had used public funds to build a highway to their private property.
Last year in Chiapas, Mexico, a reporter was sent to a maximum-security prison on a defamation charge – charge, not conviction – for reporting that an official had diverted school-construction funds to build himself a house.
The region has plenty of sensationalists writing exaggerated or outright wrong stories. But there are scores of examples of journalists doing the watchdog job that the judiciary and government won't. That's why it means so much in Latin America when newspapers are silenced by threats, prosecution or intimidation.
Beyond questions of free speech, press censorship marks the slow disappearance of accountable government, the heart and soul of any viable democracy.
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