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May 21, 2008
Guest-worker bill heads for Senate
BY MICHAEL DOYLE
Well over two million illegal immigrants could gain temporary legal
status for up to five years under a measure moving toward Senate
consideration as early as Wednesday.
On its face, the controversial immigration plan authored by California
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein bestows legal status on 1.35 million
farm workers. Actually, it reaches further to include spouses and
children. The result is a bill bigger than it appears.
''It's basic decency,'' Giev Kashkooli, the United Farm Workers'
national political legislative director, said Tuesday. ``This is a
nation that understands the importance of families.''
But neither the 101-page agricultural guest worker bill, its potential
consequences nor the surrounding politics can be called simple. Though
the bill's prospects are uncertain, it's already putting at least one
presidential candidate on the spot.
Feinstein and Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho want the immigration
package included in a $194 billion emergency spending bill that will
fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By a 17-12 vote last week, following scant debate, the Senate
Appropriations Committee added the provisions to the war spending bill.
The next steps are unclear in the Senate, where the procedural and
political dynamics are complicated.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona voted in April 2005 to include an
ambitious agricultural guest-worker plan on an earlier Iraq War spending
bill.
Now, as the Republicans' presumed 2008 presidential candidate, McCain is
wooing the very conservatives most opposed to anything that smacks of
immigration leniency.
''The lesson of our failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform is
very clear,'' McCain told a Los Angeles audience in March. ``The
American people want our borders secured first.''
Nonetheless, Kashkooli said Tuesday that he hopes McCain will still
register his support for the farm worker plan. McCain is campaigning in
California on Wednesday and Thursday, when the Senate could consider the
measure.
Agricultural guest-worker supporters potentially need 60 votes to
prevail, and they can ill afford to lose any senators.
Another key ally faded Tuesday, with the announcement that Democratic
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts was hospitalized with a malignant
brain tumor. Kennedy authored the original agricultural guest-worker
bill.
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