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High-Tech Visa Fix On The Horizon?
Republicans are likely to attach a bill expanding the number of so-called
"H1-B" work visas available for high-tech workers to spending legislation Congress will pass just prior to leaving town to concentrate on campaigning for the fall elections.
Supporters say Republicans want to include the H1-B bill in end-of-the
year spending legislation to sidestep efforts in Congress to broaden the proposal to address other immigration issues - which would render it more controversial and potentially kill it. The move also
marks their determination to pass a law on one of the few policy issues where many Republicans and the White House basically agree.
High-tech industries starved for qualified information technology workers
say the legislation is vital. The commitment to include the legislation in a final spending bill means that the H1-B legislation is one of the few pieces of substantive legislation Congress may agree to
pass this fall besides spending bills and a tax cut.
Business leaders say they have secured a commitment from Republican
leadership to include the H1-B legislation in a final spending bill this year, even though that would mean circumventing normal congressional procedures. That means that Congress could include the
immigration measure in a final, massive "omnibus" appropriations bill that could include several normally separate spending bills as well as other extraneous legislation such as changes to the
tax code.
"It could be part of an end-of-the year omnibus package. That is what
people are talking about," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Manager of Labor Policy Ali Cleveland said. "We have gotten commitments that it is going to be done."
John Czwartacki, press secretary for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott,
R-Miss., said his boss is still dedicated toward moving legislation individually, including spending bills, even as time runs short in this session. But Czwartacki says Republicans will pass the H1-B
legislation one way or another. "We will make it happen," Czwartacki said. Other Republican officials agree the H1-B legislation will move in a final, omnibus measure.
In fact, Lott has scheduled a preliminary procedural vote on the
legislation for Tuesday. No votes on the measure are expected soon in the House, where supporters of the legislation there say they will simply wait and include the H1-B bill in an omnibus appropriations
vehicle likely to move in the last hours of the 106th Congress.
The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
and Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., and in the House by Reps. David Dreier, R-Calif., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. It would raise the number of six-year work visas available to highly trained information
technology workers from 115,000 to 195,000 per year. The extra visas could prove pivotal for some high-tech firms struggling to find employees in an economy currently operating with only a 4.1 percent
unemployment rate overall and approximately a 2 percent unemployment rate in the information technology sector, according to Cleveland.
Passage of the legislation in Congress has been hampered by demands from
the White House, and some congressional Democrats to attach other provisions to the H1-B bill. These additional proposals would grant permanent amnesty to illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala,
Haiti and Honduras who arrived in the 1980s and are not covered under any current amnesty laws.
But moving the two in tandem could anger conservative Republicans,
complicate debate on the House or Senate floor, and ultimately kill the H1-B bill. Instead, Republicans will likely attach the H1-B legislation to an end-of-the year spending bill under the theory that
the White House would not veto a huge spending bill just to halt the H1-B legislation that it already supports simply because the measure does not also include the amnesty.
Czwartacki predicts the White House will drop its demand for an amnesty
because the administration does not want to risk killing the H1-B expansion. "This is a hostage 1/8the Democrats3/8 are not willing to shoot," he said.
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