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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, February 17, 2012

Scott Brown Not So Lucky with Irish Visas

Politico: Last week, the Massachusetts Republican told the Boston press that his efforts to expand visas to workers from Ireland were "about to pop." But Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley seems ready to burst that bubble.

The powerful ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is opposing Brown's efforts to quickly pass a bill that could certainly help him in a state about a quarter of whose population has Irish roots. And anti-illegal immigration forces are stepping up their opposition as well, lobbying GOP senators to block the bill on the grounds that it could hurt American workers.

Brown has pulled in some heavy hitters to lean on Grassley, soliciting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to push the Iowa Republican to cut a deal. And in an interview, Grassley said he was still talking with Brown, though a deal is far from done.

And that uncertainty is giving Irish activists back in Boston some pause.

"It's one thing to verbally come out and support it, which is great, but there has to be follow through," said James Gallagher, head of the United Irish Counties of Massachusetts. "We've been led down the primrose path before."

In an interview, Brown said he's giving more than just lip service to the issue, saying he has entered the fray to break a logjam that existed when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer included an Irish workers provision in a broader bill that also would affect undocumented Irish workers. Brown killed the undocumented worker provision in his proposal, calling it "amnesty" and saying his proposal is more suited for bipartisan support.

"I'm working on using every mechanism and every means to address their concerns like I do on every bill," Brown said of GOP opposition, saying he's simply working through the typical legislative "minefield."

And he dismissed questions that his efforts were tied to his reelection campaign.

"I don't do stuff based on campaign issues; I've been doing my job since I got here," he said.

The issue underscores the larger immigration debate enveloping the Republican Party. The Big Business wing is pushing hard to bring aboard more foreign workers, while the more nativist elements argue that doing so would take away much-needed American jobs. And it's this debate that could give Republicans like Brown a challenge in winning enough support in Congress for an issue that plays well back home.

Polls show an incredibly tight race between Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren and Brown, who won his race in 2010 to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose deep Irish ties stretched from Boston to Northern Ireland, where he helped usher in a 1998 power-sharing agreement between Protestants and Catholics.

Neither candidate in this race is of Irish descent, and political analysts say the community could emerge as a key swing voting bloc in a race that could determine which party wins power of the Senate in November. Passage of the bill could be a key talking point for Brown on the campaign trail.

"I think people are very appreciative of the role he's played so far," said Niall O'Dowd, founder of the news website IrishCentral.com. "If it doesn't pass, it will be Republicans who have damaged Brown's prospects."

Brown's bill, which he introduced with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), would add Ireland to the E-3 visa program that is currently available only to Australia, meaning 10,500 workers' visas would be available to the Irish under the proposal.

Brown brought his efforts to bear after the House overwhelmingly passed a bill last November to increase per-country visa caps based on employment and family ties, provisions that would most directly help China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. Grassley opposed that bill as well.

In December, Schumer, who represents wide swaths of Irish voters in New York City, introduced a similar version of the House-passed bill but added the Irish visa provision and included waivers for undocumented Irish immigrants. Two days later, Brown and Kirk introduced a narrowly tailored bill aimed strictly at Irish immigrants but without the undocumented workers provision, which Schumer later dropped from his bill, as well.

Last week, Brown told the Boston Herald that things were "about to pop" on the bill, which is also sought by high-tech companies in Boston.

But Grassley so far has not budged -- and that has prompted some negative headlines in the Irish press, including in the Irish Echo this week, which ran a piece that declared: "Fizzle, No Pop."

In the interview, Brown said he didn't mean to imply the bill was on the verge of passing.

"I said the issue is about to pop; I never said the bill was about to pop," he said. "The fact that we're talking about it, and it's in the forefront, that's about to pop."

But Beth Levine, Grassley's spokeswoman, added that her boss is concerned that the Brown bill could "hurt high-skilled American jobs." She added that Grassley is willing to work with Brown, and the two have met in an attempt to find an agreement.

The bill has generated a fair amount of criticism among conservative activists, like the group Federation for American Immigration Reform. A spokeswoman for the group, Kristen Williamson, said it "puts the Irish unemployed ahead of Americans."

To help find a resolution, Brown urged Cornyn to help intervene and find a compromise, and both men characterized the involvement of Senate GOP leadership as a normal part of the legislative process.

Asked whether passage of the bill would help Brown's reelection, Cornyn said, "It's a little more complicated than that. It takes a majority of the Senate to pass a bill."

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