Politico
By Seung Min Kim and Carrie Budoff Brown
May 14, 2013
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday largely kept intact an agreement on high-tech visas in the Gang of Eight immigration bill, making modest changes while defeating measures that would dramatically alter the compromise.
But one major flash point remains on tech-friendly amendments backed by a key Republican senator.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a major advocate for the tech industry, is viewed as a potential swing vote for the underlying Gang of Eight bill, and he clearly knows he has some leverage in this battle. But Hatch’s plans run right up against Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a top critic of H-1B visas and a Gang of Eight negotiator who has repeatedly stated his opposition to the heart of Hatch’s measures.
“I think they’re taking me seriously — let’s put it that way,” Hatch said Tuesday of the Gang of Eight negotiators. “And I hope they do, because if they don’t, I’m not going to support this bill. It’s just that simple.”
The committee will next meet on Thursday to finish working through the part of the 867-page legislation that deals with reforms to legal immigration programs. The panel, which is now expected to also meet on Friday, will then transition to Interior enforcement measures, which includes the E-Verify program.
Senators are still negotiating on how to vote for Hatch’s proposals, which would — among other measures — change policies on recruiting and firing for companies that use H-1B visas.
On Tuesday, Durbin signaled some progress in negotiations on pieces of Hatch’s amendments. But the Democrat remains opposed to the core of the Hatch proposals, which Durbin said are intended to make it more difficult for American workers to find jobs in high-skilled fields.
“We want all the support we can get” for the Gang’s bill, Durbin told reporters. “But you know, if the price of support for any Republican member is for us to turn this carefully crafted, politically balanced deal on its head, it’s not worth it.”
On Tuesday, the committee accepted some tweaks to the H-1B visa program, including two Republican-sponsored measures. One requires employers to post more information online about a job opening before hiring a foreign worker for that slot. Another doubles certain visa fees and funnels that money into a fund for science, technology, engineering and math education.
Still, senators on Tuesday defeated most amendments that would tamper with the deal crafted by the eight senators on visas for high-skilled workers.
Sen. Chuck Grassley — who, like Durbin, is a critic of H-1B visas — tried to include measures to crack down on the program, such as more stringent audits of companies that use those visas or a requirement for businesses to make a “good faith effort” to first hire U.S. workers.
And a Republican proposal for the opposite result was also defeated. The committee shot down an amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would lift the current 65,000 H-1B visa cap to 325,000.
Overall, the committee considered 29 primary amendments on Tuesday with 15 of them — including five sponsored by Republicans — passing.
Among the amendments that cleared Tuesday was a proposal meant to improve information-sharing about foreign students — a direct influence of last month’s Boston bombings on the ongoing immigration debate on Capitol Hill.
The amendment from Grassley would require the Department of Homeland Security to transmit information about student visas into U.S. Customs and Border Protection databases. If that isn’t done within 120 days, issuing certain student visas would be suspended.
One alleged accomplice of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect from last month’s attack in Boston, was allowed to re-enter the United States earlier this year, although his student visa had expired. Azamat Tazhayakov, a classmate of Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, returned to New York from Kazakhstan on Jan. 20, although the school had already dismissed him.
Customs and Border Protection officials had not been told that Tazhayakov was no longer enrolled at the school. Tazhayakov, along with fellow classmate Dias Kadyrbayev, is charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Another alleged accomplice, Robel Phillipos, is accused of lying to federal agents.
A congressional aide said the Grassley amendment would allow all ports of entry to have the most updated information on student visas.
The bulk of this week’s committee debate on the bill centers on reforming legal immigration efforts, such as visas for high-skilled workers and a new guest worker program. A central battle will be protecting the delicately negotiated guest worker program — a product of negotiations between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO.
Senators also turned back an amendment from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a leading critic of the immigration bill, to require a biometric entry and exit system at all ports of entry.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is a key member of the Gang of Eight but does not sit on the Judiciary Committee, was “disappointed” that the committee rejected the amendment, spokesman Alex Conant said in an email.
“Sen. Rubio will fight to add biometrics to the exit system when the bill is amended on the Senate floor,” Conant said. “Having an exit system that utilizes biometric information will help make sure that future visitors to the United States leave when they are supposed to.”
Another Sessions proposal — to limit the total number of legal immigrants to 20 million over a decade — was also rejected.
One of Sessions’s many arguments against the immigration bill is that it would introduce an unsustainably high level of immigrants that would put American workers at a disadvantage for jobs while pulling down wages.
“I don’t believe that economists would say, particularly for lower-income Americans, that we need more workers right now,” he said. “I just don’t see how that’s possible.”
Still, all senators on the committee besides Sessions shot down the amendment. Cruz, who has normally allied with Sessions on many committee votes, said he opposed the proposal because he is a “full-throated advocate of legal immigration.”
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