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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Friday, January 25, 2013

Obama Moving to Divide Republicans With Immigration-Law Push


Bloomberg
By Elizabeth Dwoskin
January 24, 2013

President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address was heavy on the theme of unity. He used the word “together” seven times in the 15-minute speech. Buried beneath the comity was the prelude to a coming fight with Republicans on an issue that divides them: immigration reform.

Obama couched his comments about immigration in uplifting language.

“Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity,” he said. “Until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce, rather than expelled from our country.”

On the surface, there’s nothing controversial about that. Increasing the number of visas for highly skilled immigrants is one of the few policy goals Obama and Republicans agree on. That reflects a big change in Republican thinking in recent months, as party leaders have softened their anti-immigration rhetoric after almost three-quarters of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Obama in November.

If visas for highly skilled workers were the only issue, Democrats and Republicans could quickly resolve it. Yet it isn’t. What Obama didn’t say in his speech is that he will insist on tying the visas to broader changes in immigration laws, which many Republicans strongly object to.

Citizenship Path

Earlier in January, White House officials told reporters that the president won’t agree to raise the visa caps without changes that include a path to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S.

These immigrants aren’t the “bright young” future job creators Obama lauded in his speech. Most work dirty jobs for low wages, and many lack high school diplomas. They’re the undocumented workers Republican governors in Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, and other states have tried to drive away with tough anti-immigration laws.

Obama’s everything-at-once approach exploits a rift in the Republican Party, which is struggling to find a policy its factions can accept. For many House Republicans from southern and border states, words such as “legalization” and “citizenship” are nonstarters.

Obama is just dangling visas for the highly skilled as a way of pressuring conservatives to go along with his “real goal,” Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, says in an e-mail, “which is mass amnesty for illegal immigrants.”

Compromise Sought

Still, party leaders and other prominent conservatives -- House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida -- are urging a compromise, yet to be defined, between “throw them out” and “make them citizens.”

“There are people who are saying, let’s look at the whole problem,” says Alfonso Aguilar, an immigration adviser to former President George W. Bush who is now executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Washington advocacy group pressing for immigration reform. “Clearly, we can’t deport them all.”

Rubio has offered the only concrete ideas for compromise -- requiring undocumented workers to pay back taxes and a fine, participate in a guest-worker program, and wait several years for a green card to avoid the appearance they’re cutting in line ahead of legal immigrants.

Even Republicans who generally agree with such an approach may refuse to say so. Congress’s last major immigration bill, in 2006, failed in part because anti-immigration groups besieged Republicans who supported the effort with angry calls and attack ads.

Super PAC

This time, a new super political action committee, Republicans for Immigration Reform, is promising to give cash and political cover to Republicans willing to back a bill.

“We want members to know there are resources that will be available to them if they support a broad-based approach to reform,” says co-founder Charles Spies, a former counsel for Restore Our Future, a super PAC that supported Mitt Romney, last year’s Republican presidential nominee. Spies won’t say how much he’s raised or from whom.

Aguilar voices optimism that immigration can be retooled as a conservative issue Republicans can get behind.

“If you’re for the free market, which are the basic tenets of Reagan conservatism, then you can’t be against immigration,” he says.

No one expects minds to change quickly. That means skilled would-be immigrants hoping for the door to open could be in for a long wait. They’ve become the essential bargaining chip in what will likely be a tense, protracted negotiation -- between Democrats and Republicans, and Republicans and Republicans.

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