Be Our Guest Worker
The immigration bill the Senate passed in 2013 — the focus of the long- running debate on “comprehensive immigration reform” in Washington — is a carefully crafted compromise between business and labor. Business would get more guest worker visas for highly skilled, agricultural and seasonal workers, while labor would get a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million or so immigrants now living in the country illegally, and the possibility of them joining unions.
Democrats view the two sides of the deal as crucial, but most Republicans side with immigration opponents in their districts and oppose the deal. With little hope of enactment this year, the compromise is all but dead.
What will replace it, after Republicans took the Senate and hold on to the House in this year’s election, could be good news for business and a disaster for labor: a scaled-back measure that increases guest worker visas.
“I can see both chambers passing bills that would include lots of guest workers,” says Mark Krikorian, who leads the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors stricter controls. “It would be loaded with guest workers.”
Such a bill would allow Republicans to claim some progress on the immigration issue, even though a guest worker bill would have only limited political appeal to Hispanic voters, a constituency the GOP wants to court to win the presidency in 2016. As a result, Democrats might not fear losing the political potency of the immigration issue by signing off on a guest worker bill.
A few high-placed Republicans could put up roadblocks, including Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa senator who would probably chair the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans are in charge. He’s a longtime critic of the H-1B visa program for high-tech workers. So is Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, who took to the Senate floor to question the need for more H-1B visas after Microsoft laid off 18,000 people in July.
But most Republicans are eager to help American companies, even as they oppose offering a path to citizenship to immigrants who are here illegally. And Democrats have hinted they might be willing to compromise on their comprehensive approach. “The basic structure of the Senate legislation is now 10 years old, and there’s going to have to be some rethinking and changed assumptions,” says Michael Fix, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a centrist think tank. Some Democrats are starting to think a pathway to citizenship is “not an absolutist goal,” Fix adds.