[Mb-civic] Senators Back Guest Workers - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Senators Back Guest Workers
Panel's Measure Sides With Bush

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; A01

A key Senate panel broke with the House's get-tough approach to illegal 
immigration yesterday and sent to the floor a broad revision of the 
nation's immigration laws that would provide lawful employment to 
millions of undocumented workers while offering work visas to hundreds 
of thousands of new immigrants every year.

With bipartisan support, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12 to 6 to 
side with President Bush's general approach to an immigration issue that 
is dividing the country, fracturing the Republican Party and ripening 
into one of the biggest political debates of this election year. 
Conservatives have loudly demanded that the government tighten control 
of U.S. borders and begin deporting illegal immigrants. But in recent 
weeks, the immigrant community has risen up in protest, marching by the 
hundreds of thousands to denounce what they see as draconian measures 
under consideration in Washington.

"There is no issue outside of civil rights that brings out the kind of 
emotions we have seen," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), one of 
the bill's primary sponsors, who called the controversy "a defining 
issue of our times."

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) rushed committee 
members to complete their work to meet a midnight deadline imposed by 
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who favors a tougher 
approach more in line with the version passed by the House last 
December. But once the committee had acted, Frist declined to say last 
night whether he would substitute the committee's legislation for his 
own, which includes no guest-worker program.

Frist's efforts to wrest control of the issue from the Judiciary 
Committee could produce a power struggle among Republicans once the 
majority leader brings up the issue for debate and votes in the full 
Senate, probably this week. Specter and the other committee leaders may 
have to muscle their bill through as an amendment if Frist refuses to 
back down.

Frist, a presidential aspirant whom Bush helped elect as majority 
leader, favors tightening control of the nation's borders without 
granting what he calls amnesty to the approximately 11 million illegal 
immigrants living in this country. But Bush favors a comprehensive 
approach, which he says must include some program to answer business's 
need for immigrant labor.

"Congress needs to pass a comprehensive bill that secures the border, 
improves interior enforcement, and creates a temporary-worker program to 
strengthen our security and our economy," Bush said yesterday at a 
ceremony to swear in 30 new U.S. citizens from 20 countries. "Completing 
a comprehensive bill is not going to be easy. It will require all of us 
in Washington to make tough choices and make compromises."

Polls indicate about 60 percent of Americans oppose guest-worker 
programs that would offer illegal immigrants an avenue to lawful work 
status, and three-quarters of the country believe the government is 
doing too little to secure the nation's borders.

But the immigrant community has been galvanized by what it sees as a 
heavy-handed crackdown on undocumented workers by Washington. The House 
in December rejected calls for a guest-worker program and instead 
approved a bill that would stiffen penalties on illegal immigrants, 
force businesses to run the names of each employee through federal 
databases to prove their legality, deploy more border agents and 
unmanned aerial vehicles to the nation's frontiers and build massive 
walls along sections of the U.S.-Mexican border.

At least 14,000 students stormed out of schools in Southern California 
and elsewhere yesterday, waving flags and chanting to protest 
congressional actions. About 100 demonstrators, including members of the 
clergy, appeared at the Capitol yesterday in handcuffs to object to 
provisions in the House bill that would make illegal immigrants into 
felons and criminalize humanitarian groups that feed and house them. 
More than a half-million marchers protested in Los Angeles on Saturday, 
following protests in Phoenix, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.

"The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified 
way," Bush said. "No one should play on people's fears, or try to pit 
neighbors against each other."

A confrontation between the Senate and House Republicans now appears 
inevitable.

"We are eager, once the Senate passes this bill, to sit down and talk 
with them, but there are certain fundamental principles which we simply 
cannot compromise on," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cosponsored 
the bill that passed the Judiciary Committee largely intact last night. 
"It has to be a comprehensive approach. As we all know, just building 
walls and hiring more border patrols are not the answers to our 
immigration problem."

Specter, the committee chairman, had tried for weeks to find a middle 
ground between senators advocating a generous guest-worker program and 
those categorically rejecting amnesty for illegal immigrants. In the 
end, that search for a compromise failed because advocates of the 
guest-worker program had more than enough votes to overcome conservative 
opposition.

The panel voted to accept a bill largely patterned on the measure 
sponsored by Kennedy and McCain. Specter and Republican Sens. Lindsey O. 
Graham (S.C.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio) joined the 
committee's Democrats to win passage.

The panel's bill would allow the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants 
in this country to apply for a work visa after paying back taxes and a 
penalty. The first three-year visa could be renewed for three more 
years. After four years, visa holders could apply for green cards and 
begin moving toward citizenship. An additional 400,000 such visas would 
be offered each year to workers seeking to enter the country.

Senators also accepted a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) 
that would offer 1.5 million illegal farmworkers a "blue card" visa that 
would legalize their status. The committee also accepted a provision by 
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that would shield humanitarian 
organizations from prosecution for providing more than simple emergency 
aid to illegal immigrants, rejecting an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn 
(R-Tex.) to require humanitarian groups providing food, medical aid and 
advice to illegal immigrants to register with the Department of Homeland 
Security.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) protested that the Feinstein proposal was more 
focused on offering illegal immigrants a path to citizenship than 
meeting the labor demands of agriculture. Cornyn suggested the Judiciary 
Committee bill was moving toward creating a caste of second-class workers.

But Cornyn may have summed up Senate fears when he referred to energized 
voters protesting what they see as amnesty for people who violated the 
nation's laws and made a mockery of its borders.

"The American people are thinking, 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 
twice, shame on me,' " he said. "The only way we can get the confidence 
of the American people is to convince them we are absolutely serious 
about border security and law enforcement."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR2006032700684.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060328/efa86c9d/attachment.htm