Greg Siskind on Immigration Law and Policy

Heritage Immigration Study Author Resigns

From the Washington Post:

Jason Richwine, the co-author of a controversial immigration study released this week by the Heritage Foundation, tells Post Politics that he has resigned his position with the organization.

“Yes, that’s right,” Richwine wrote in a brief e-mail. Heritage confirmed that he resigned.

The study written by Richwine and Robert Rector argued that the immigration reform bill would cost $6.3 trillion, but it was widely panned by conservative groups pushing for immigration reform as not accounting for the economic benefits of immigrants.

Complicating matters were a series of revelations about Richwine, including that he had written a doctoral thesis at Harvard University arguing that the United States should focus its immigration efforts on those with high IQs and that he had written for a Web site that describes itself as “nationalist.”

American Conservative Union Endorses Immigration Reform

The ACU, the oldest membership-based conservative group in the US, has issued a letter strongly endorsing immigration reform. One more sign that immigration reform WILL happen this year. Here's the ACU statement:

“President Obama and the liberals in the Senate have planned for a long time to use executive power and push legislation that would legalize those immigrants here illegally quickly with no border security, no interior security, and no reform of our legal immigration process.  Given President Obama’s history of executive action, simply opposing immigration reform should not be the conservative response to this problem.  We believe conservatives should be leading the way on this issue by supporting legislation that upholds conservative principles.

Conservatives are ready to support immigration reform, so long as it is pro-economic growth, strengthens families, fosters assimilation and prevents another wave of illegal immigration from happening again.  The immigration bill being taken up in the Senate is an important starting point in the effort to improve what even those opposed to the bill agree is a failed and broken system.  The bill includes triggers to insure border security and interior security before any immigrant is given permanent legal status.  It includes a guest worker program that moves us toward a merit-based system.  Notably, these are all key features that President Obama has vociferously opposed and undermined during his four years in office and are provisions that conservatives have been advocating for decades.

This legislation is not perfect.  We do not expect the bill without amendments to pass, and we encourage good-faith amendments to improve the legislation.  We are encouraged by the starting point that Senator Rubio and his Republican colleagues have gotten leading liberals in the Senate to agree to.  We believe they are working in good faith to improve the bill and we support a fair, open and transparent legislative process.  We ask that conservatives in the Senate work to improve the legislation.  America needs immigration reform.  As the Democrats run the Senate, the ball is in their court.  They can work with conservatives to improve the legislation to foster growth and security and help be a part of solving the problem.  Or they can undermine it, by putting partisan politics over sound public policy.”

 

Summary of All Amendments to Immigration Bill Approved on 5/9 by Senate Immigration Subcommittee

The Senate Judiciary Committee met all day and considered 36 amendments to S. 744. Some were clearly poison pills deisgned to make the bill unpassable and all of those failed. 21 were passed. The day began by passing a technical corrections amendment that replaced all of the originally introduced S.744. The bill is substantively very similar to the original bill with a few substantive changes. That language was released about a week ago so no suprises there.

Senator Leahy then went through three dozen amendments all relating to the preliminary part of the immigration bill dealing with triggers as well as the border enforcement provisions in Title I of the bill. The other titles of the bill will be dealt with in mark ups scheduled throughout the month.

Below is my summary of each of the amendments passed today. The full text of each can be found here.

 

Summary of S.744 amendments passed during 5-9 markup

Senate Immigration Bill Amendment Process Begins

You can see the text of the hundreds of introduced amendments here.

You can watch the hearings live here.

Heritage Study Co-Author Opposed Hispanic Immigration Due to Their Low IQ

The Heritage report is easy enough to criticize just on its face. But when you learn a little about the person behind the report, you get a better picture of what is happening here.

Anti-Immigrant Heritage Foundation Issues Surprising Report Saying Immigration Costly

I know. I couldn't believe it either. No credible economists are backing up the study claiming that the immigration bill will cost zillions. I'm not going to waste time critiquing this joke of a report since so many others have already done so. I'll just remind readers that there have been many, many other better studies saying jsut the opposite.  Read more here.

Amendment-palooza

The antis have a strategy of trying to slow down CIR by proposing a jillion amendments. Most are in the gimme a break category and have no chance. National Journal has a good run down of the politics at work here. One test will be regarding amendments that change some of the negotiated major provisions of the bill on issues like guest workers and the legalization program. The Gang of Eight vows to oppose amendments that would impact those negotiations.

I'm not going to summarize the amendment proposals because there will be hundreds of them. But I will report on amendments that actually pass.

Germans Prosecuting Alleged Nazi Camp Guard Deported in 1983

The US deported Hans Lipshis in 1983 after it concluded he lied about his Nazi past. But the German government never prosecuted him because they could not confirm the role he played during his employment at the Auschwitz death camp. Now they have finally arrested Lipshis arguing that even if they don't know precisely what role he played, he can be prosecuted as an accessory. Interestingly, the Germans still have 50 active cases from the Nazi era.

Hat tip to my daughter Eden for bringing this to my attention.

NYT: US Silicon Valley Companies Responsible for Anti-Indian Staffing Company Rules in Senate Bill

The Times has an interesting piece about the background of the H-1B provisions in the Senate immigration bill. In particular, the role that some of the largest American tech companies played not only in getting the H-1B cap raised, but in making it much more difficult for IT staffing companies - particularly the big Indian IT staffing firms - to be able claim numbers in the cap. To some extent, this seems to be a little payback. A few Indian IT staffing firms have filed massive numbers of applications and America's employers have been squeezed out of having access to these vital visas. They're also blamed fairly or unfairly for various abuses that have damaged the reputation of the H-1B program. And they're finding few friends rushing to their defense.

Silicon Valley lobbyists told Senate negotiators they agreed that the H1-B visa system had been subject to abuse. Go after the companies that take advantage of guest worker visas and give us the benefit of the doubt, they told the Senate staff members, according to interviews with several lobbyists.

“You know and we know there are some bad people in this system,” is how Scott Corley, the president of Compete America, a technology industry coalition, recalled the conversation. “We are simply trying to make sure that as they are pursuing the rats they are not sinking the ship.” That acknowledgment, several lobbyists said privately, helped unlock an impasse in negotiations.

What emerged was a Senate measure that allows American technology companies to procure many more skilled guest worker visas, raising the limit to 110,000 a year from 65,000 under current law, along with a provision to expand it further based on market demand. The bill would also allow these companies to move workers on guest visas more easily to permanent resident visas, freeing up more temporary visas for these companies.

But it requires them to pay higher wages for guest workers and to post job openings on a Web site, so Americans can have a chance at them. And it draws a line in the sand between these technology firms and the mostly Indian companies that supply computer workers on H-1B visas for short-term jobs at companies in the United States.

Goodlatte and House Gang of Eight Could Both Come out Winners on Immigration Bill

The AP has an interesting article mainly profiling Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. The story raises an intresting possibility - namely that Goodlatte could make the hardliners happy by considering immigration reform in a piecemeal fashion and possibly only approve one or two bills that avoid some of the provisions that will have a hard time passing. And then the House Gang of Eight's broader immigration proposal can be considered by the entire House of Representatives through the amendment process. Or the House could just pass the more limited piecemeal bill and negotiate a compromise bill with the Senate through a conference committee. 

That acknowledgement may point to limits to what Goodlatte might do on immigration, or any other issue. He’s not seen as likely to bolt from what GOP leaders decide. “He’s not a rogue chairman,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a senior Judiciary Committee member.

Indeed Goodlatte is not going to have the final word on how any immigration overhaul moves forward in the House. That will fall to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who could end up using an individual bill passed by Goodlatte’s committee as the vehicle for negotiating a compromise with the Senate on whatever more sweeping legislation it passes. A bipartisan group of House members operating separately from Goodlatte also is working on wide-ranging immigration overhaul legislation, though it’s unclear when those lawmakers will conclude a final deal and release their bill.

Despite his preference for a step-by-step approach that some activists fear could drag out immigration overhaul until it comes to nothing, Goodlatte sounds decidedly open to compromise on the trickiest policy issue for Republicans in the debate — how to deal with the estimated 11 million immigrants already here illegally. He envisions a legal status short of citizenship for them, and from there the potential to make use of the existing legal avenues to naturalization, whether through work or family connections.

And he said he sees potential for overlap between his approach and the more aggressive citizenship path sought by Obama, most Democrats and some Republicans, including John McCain and Marco Rubio in the Senate.

“I think there’s a lot of discussions going on about this both on Capitol Hill and by different groups outside of the Congress that leads me to believe that it’s possible to find common ground,” says Goodlatte.

Goodlatte could essentially walk the tightrope on this issue by giving his committee it's say but also not denying the entire House the opportunity to decide if it wants a comprehensive bill or something narrower. And the House Gang of Eight could win if their version of a comprehensive bill becomes the House's starting point for negotiating with the Senate.