Looking to tweak, not kill the bill

Business lobbyists, while saying they support an overhaul of immigration laws, are pushing to alter the delicately crafted Senate measure in key ways.

The high-tech industry, for example, is resisting a proposed switch to a merit-based system for the allocation of green cards. Preference is currently given to family reunification.

{mosads}Other business interests want the Senate to increase the number of temporary workers who can claim permanent status each year. The bill would allow 400,000 temporary workers each year, roughly the number business had sought, but only 10,000 could move annually to permanent status.

Still other corporate lobbyists are working to alter language that relates to the employment verification system, including a requirement to recertify the workforce over a three-year period.

Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who lobbies for several groups with a stake in the debate, called the mandate a “gigantic lift” for the business community.

Despite their concerns, none of business groups appear ready to abandon the bill, which is the result of months of
behind-the-scenes negotiations.

Business interests have been among the most active participants in the process, joining congressional Democrats and the
White House as the main backers of the broad reform proposal, whose underlying intention is to deal with an estimated 12 million illegal workers in the United States.

But several lobbyists said the bill should be amended during the Senate floor debate this week.

High-tech companies are among the most dispirited by the result of the negotiations, lobbyists said.

Giving preference to skilled workers with advanced degrees and applicants already proficient in English is intended to upgrade the workforce pool and ease assimilation.

But high-tech lobbyists said companies would have less discretion in choosing candidates under the system proposed by the bill.

“It would dictate the pool of candidates tech has to pick from,” said one tech lobbyist.

Companies now sponsor favored applicants. A company could still nominate a foreign-born worker under a point-based system, but that worker would then be put in a much larger group of applicants and ranked by measures over which the prospective employer has no control.

Other countries rely on a point system to attract talented immigrants. But Robert Hoffman, a vice president for Oracle, said the system is unnecessary in the United States.

“We don’t have any problem attracting talent,” Hoffman said.

 Morrison said moving away from a policy of family reunification could have the perverse effect of putting “more pressure on the system.”

Immigrants will still want to be reunited with family members, regardless of whether they have official permission to do so, he said.

The bill does give business some of what it wants. It increases the number of green cards given each year as well as the number of temporary H-1B visa passes, something the tech industry has sought.

But tech companies still want to be able to hire an unlimited number of foreign-born students with advanced degrees from American universities. The number currently is capped at 20,000.

“We think the bill should be amended,” Hoffman said.

Business will be supported on a number of issues by its traditional enemy, labor.  

The two groups want the annual allocation of workers eligible to move from temporary status to permanent resident to be higher than the 10,000 now called for.

“That’s not enough,” said Eliseo Merina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Labor and business also agree that temporary workers should be able to stay for a period longer than two years, the limit now set by the bill.

Temporary workers would be able to stay for two years, and then return home for one year, before becoming eligible for another two-year pass. The process would be repeated three times before the immigrant could gain permanent legal status.
Going home is “easy to do if you are from Mexico, but it would be very difficult if you are from China or the Phillipines,” said SEIU’s Merina. Plus, there should be more assurance that a worker will in fact be allowed back in.

Business opposes the two-year limit because it could lose skilled workers.

There are a variety of other, lesser fixes that lobbyists will push for this week as senators debate the massive bill, which could come in at more than 1,000 pages.

Morrison, whose clients include the American Hospital Association, said the bill doesn’t do enough to close a huge nursing shortage. There are 118,000 nursing jobs unfilled, he said.

He’s also looking for a carve-out for foreign fashion models. Models come in on H-1B visas, where they compete with, and take slots from, high-skilled workers.

Foreign models sometimes can’t get the visas they need to do American photo shoots, Morrison said. That can mean model agencies take their shoots offshore, to the detriment of domestic hotels, hair salons, caterers and photographers.

The Fashion Model Fairness Project, which has model agencies as its members, is seeking a separate visa for foreign models. The bill is silent on the issue, but Morrison hopes a fix will be added as a manager’s amendment to the bill.

Lobbyists said they would work this week to soften the bill’s rough edges. But they also acknowledge that they won’t likely get everything they want on such a controversial topic.

Lobbyists insist that the changes they propose shouldn’t threaten the overall bill.

“We believe we are not disrupting the compromise in any way,” Hoffman said.