WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 28, 2007

Saving Pieces of Immigration Bill
Lawmakers May Aid Work-Force Levels; Some Want to Wait

By DAVID ROGERS

WASHINGTON -- With the collapse of immigration overhaul, agriculture and high-tech interests will seek new solutions to their labor problems while Republicans sift through the wreckage of a fight that stamped President Bush as a lame duck.

 Within minutes of yesterday's defeat in the Senate, Democrats were discussing how to salvage pieces of the immigration bill, including farm-labor provisions that could be attached to this summer's farm bill.

High-tech firms have allies in Congress who could press for legislation to increase the number of high-skilled workers allowed visas each year.

The portion of the bill that expands college-education and military-service opportunities for the children of illegal immigrants has broad appeal. But overhaul supporters admit being torn between rushing in to save provisions or letting problems worsen until public
support builds for a comprehensive approach.

"Here's the dilemma," said Rep. Howard Berman (D., Cal.). "Try to do something to make the situation a little bit better or wait for the pot to boil over."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who spent months helping craft the bill, expects more raids on employers hiring illegal immigrants. "There were some very valuable tools that were left on the floor of the Senate today," he said. "We're going to do it the hard way, by arresting people [and] charging them with criminal offenses."

Few believe the larger bill can be resurrected before a new president and Congress are elected next year. "Until another election occurs, and something happens in the body politic, what occurred today is fairly final," said Sen. Mel Martinez, the Cuban-born Florida Republican and national party leader.

 Only a dozen Republicans stood with Mr. Bush on the 46-53 roll call, which fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to expedite debate and passage this week. The true margin of defeat was closer to two or three votes, but once the outcome was clear, senators ran for cover. Even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, up for re-election in Kentucky next
year, voted "no."

House Republicans contributed to the defeat by passing a party resolution opposing the Senate bill. Despite their efforts to now draw Speaker Nancy Pelosi into the fray, she can use the Senate stalemate as an excuse to avoid a politically difficult issue. If individual pieces are saved, a lead candidate is the so-called AgJOBS portion of the bill, which confines itself to 1.5 million workers with proven records of agriculture employment and who are willing to remain on farms over the next three to five years to qualify for permanent residency.

"We have to get AgJOBS in place, because it's going to be very difficult to harvest without it," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, from agriculture-rich California. "People are frightened, and employees have dropped about 20% in the farm area." Ms. Pelosi supports creation of a new visa coveted by high tech for scholars in science and math. And some Republican critics of the administration's bill have their own proposal
that would return the number of H1B visas to higher levels and add more green cards so employers can petition for skilled workers to become permanent residents.

The Dream Act, a third piece of the failed bill, is designed to open educational opportunities, such as in-state tuition benefits, now barred to the children of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally. It would create a path to citizenship for those who enlist in the military.

For Mr. Bush, immigration overhaul was very much a dream as well. Like Lyndon Johnson on civil rights and Bill Clinton on welfare and trade, it was an issue that pitted him squarely against his party's base. But Iraq has left him far weaker at this stage of his presidency, and he never threw himself into the fight as Mr. Clinton did, for example, in winning approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. "If you are going
to pass something that splits your party, you have to go to the country hard," said Michael Levy, a former Treasury official and veteran of the Nafta fight, which carried echoes of the immigration debate. "Bush did go to the country, but not hard. He didn't pick high-profile fights like we did with Al Gore debating Ross Perot. What happened here was the
average guy on the street turned the other way, and talk radio killed him [Mr. Bush]. "

 

The president appears to have been hurt, too, by a distrust toward government cited by both sides in the debate. "A lot of Americans have lost faith in their government," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.). "They don't think we can control our borders, win a war, issue passports, solve other problems. So they ask this question...why should we give
more power to the government to do things it hasn't been willing to do in the past?"