Wall Street Journal
By Kristina Peterson and Janet Hook
June 25, 2013
Prospects dimmed Tuesday for resolving some Republicans’ concerns over the Senate immigration bill’s agricultural provisions, as lawmakers expressed pessimism that a standoff over amendments could be eased.
Even with the Senate expected to easily pass a sweeping rewrite of immigration laws with more than 60 votes later this week, the bill’s supporters are still hoping to win over a handful of wavering GOP lawmakers and aides said it remained possible that the Senate would consider later this week amendments designed to assuage specific senators’ concerns. But mounting political and procedural hurdles made striking a deal increasingly unlikely over proposed changes to the bill’s carefully negotiated section on agricultural guest workers, according to lawmakers and aides.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.), who introduced a slew of agriculture amendments, told reporters Tuesday that negotiators were “not really” making progress.
“I’ve made my position well known and not getting much in the way of reaction,” he said.
Mr. Chambliss’s amendments seek to alter provisions hashed out earlier this year through negotiations that reached beyond the bipartisan “Group of Eight” senators who wrote the bill to include Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), farm-worker unions and employers. Among his proposals, the Georgia Republican wants the annual allotment of 112,333 visas for agricultural guest workers to be distributed twice a year: in January and in July, rather than the current bill’s quarterly schedule. His amendment would make 70% of the visas available in January, to better align with hiring practices, a Chambliss aide said.
Mr. Chambliss has also objected to a provision in the bill that allows some agricultural workers to get permanent resident status, known as a green card, in five years, a faster process than the 10-year path for most other illegal immigrants already living in the United States.
“Right now it’s frankly too easy when it comes to the base bill, if you’re in agriculture, to get a green card — it needs to get tightened up,” Mr. Chambliss said. His amendment would require agricultural workers to meet a higher standard of evidence — comparable to what is required elsewhere in the bill — to prove they are eligible for the expedited process, a Chambliss aide said.
Fellow Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson supported Mr. Chambliss’s amendments, but the proposals quickly drew opposition from the unions that helped negotiate them.
“Farm workers already made major concessions to reach an agreement and should not be asked to make more,” United Farm Workers of America said in an alert sent to its supporters Tuesday. “The amendments would undermine the ability of farm workers to earn legal immigration status, a core piece of the compromise.” The AFL-CIO, the nation’s biggest labor federation, also opposes the amendments.
Procedural hurdles also complicated the effort to consider other amendments on the Senate floor, including one from Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio). Mr. Portman said Tuesday he can’t vote for the immigration bill without a vote on his amendment to improve the accuracy of E-Verify, the federal online database used to verify workers’ legality.
Despite days of negotiations, Democrats and Republicans have not been able to reach an agreement on which amendments to bring to the Senate floor.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Tuesday that aides were still trying to strike a deal on considering further amendments.
“We’re not there yet. I’m informed the last half hour or so we went backwards rather than forwards,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor, but said he remained hopeful. “We can still do it. This can be done,” he said.
Some Republicans were quicker to predict the procedural negotiations would fail. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters he thought no other amendments would be allowed this week.
Now that Democrats have established the bill has more than 60 votes, they “have very little incentive to offer a minority an opportunity to offer amendments, which means this bill is going to be a lot worse than it could have been if amendments had been allowed and voted on,” he said.
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