GOP, Democrats Square Off Over Bill To Allow Entry of More Foreign Workers
By Marjorie Valbrun
The Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2000


WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats both want action on legislation to
let more skilled foreign workers into the U.S. They just want it for
different reasons.


The GOP champions a bill to boost the number of so-called H-1B visas
because high-tech companies are demanding it to help meet the need for
software engineers and other Silicon Valley jobs. The bill also has the
advantage of making Democrats choose between the high-tech industry, prized
for its symbolic value and campaign donations, and union leaders who oppose
the measure in the name of protecting domestic jobs.


But Democrats have found a wedge issue of their own in H-1B legislation.
The Clinton administration, which has joined Republicans in endorsing the
visa increase, is offering a proposal that simultaneously would grant legal
status to some illegal aliens from Central American and the Caribbean now
working in the U.S. And that is squeezing Republicans, who oppose the
measure but are worried about appearing insensitive to immigrants and the
poor as the 2000 elections approach.


The debate "is a microcosm of the battle for two of the hottest properties
in American electoral politics: Silicon Valley, which represents money and
the New Economy, and immigrants, who represent votes," says Frank Sharry,
executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which backs targeted
legalization programs such as the one the president is proposing.


Whether the legislation will survive the standoff isn't yet clear. The
House Judiciary Committee this month approved a measure to boost H-1B visas
and sent it to the full House. But in the process Republicans beat back an
effort to incorporate President Clinton's immigration proposals. And the
committee's near party-line vote suggests that proponents face a challenge
to assemble the broad support needed to enact the measure before Congress
adjourns this fall.


Should Mr. Clinton's insistence on legalizing central American immigrants
kill the legislation, Democrats would be able to avoid antagonizing
organized labor as well as attack the GOP. "The Democrats are just as well
off whether the legislation fails or succeeds," one GOP congressional
staffer says.


The political debate over the measure is already in full cry. Prospective
Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush, hoping to court high-tech
support and portray Vice President Al Gore as antibusiness, has hammered
the administration's tardiness in increasing H-1B visas.


"By failing to support legislation to increase the number of highly
skilled, highly trained immigrants, the Clinton-Gore administration is
standing in the way of continued economic growth," the Texas governor
declared in March. He challenged the White House to "put the public's
interests ahead of union bosses and special interests who oppose legal
immigration."


Since then, the White House has endorsed the idea, embodied in bipartisan
legislation backed by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, to increase the number
of H-1B visas to 200,000 from 115,000 over the next three years. A
coalition of business, high-tech and academic groups also favors such an
increase.


But in the process Mr. Clinton added a new twist. He says the H-1B visa
legislation should also include a provision granting permanent resident
status to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants from Central America and the
Caribbean. The measure would give refugees who fled wars and political
unrest in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti the opportunity to
apply for permanent resident status under a 1997 law that allowed
Nicaraguans and Cubans to do the same. It would also permit illegal
immigrants who have lived in the U.S. continuously since 1986 the chance to
receive permanent resident status; current law permits only those who have
lived here since 1972 to do so.


"These are issues of basic fairness," declares Gene Sperling, director of
President Clinton's National Economic Council. He says the administration
worked behind the scenes for months to gain consensus for the president's
plan, but decided to "let people know where we stood once" that became
impossible.


It is more like basic politics, grouse Republicans. Rep. Lamar Smith of
Texas, a persistent skeptic of increasing immigration levels in his role as
chairman of a key immigration subcommittee, opposes the Clinton proposal as
an election-season ploy. One GOP leadership aide is more blunt, calling the
Clinton proposal "an attempt to whack the Republicans as anti-immigrant."


"It's disappointing," adds GOP Rep. David Dreier of California, a sponsor
of the H-1B visa increase. Though he calls Mr. Clinton's plan for the
Central American and Caribbean refugees "worthy of consideration," he
argues that administration officials "appear to be trying to weaken the
legislation and use this important work-force issue as a vehicle to move
unrelated immigration" proposals.


The debate isn't strictly split along party lines. Former Republican vice
presidential candidate Jack Kemp and former Clinton Housing Secretary Henry
Cisneros have both endorsed Mr. Clinton's plan along with an odd-bedfellows
collection of conservative, liberal and labor groups.


The issue creates a swirl of political currents for the presidential
candidates of both parties. The Clinton administration has labored for
years to rid the Democratic Party of its antibusiness image, and Mr. Gore
in particular has laboriously wooed the high-tech industry. Just this
month, Mr. Gore raised $1.5 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists
at a Democratic fund-raiser, and he plans to return to Northern California
for more fund raising in late June. Action on H-1B visas can only make his
fund-raising chores there easier.


Mr. Bush, meanwhile, is seeking to drive home his message of "compassionate
conservatism" by courting Hispanic voters, who are politically influential
in such key states as California, Florida and New York. In recent weeks the
Texas governor has attended a Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Diego,
addressed the National Hispanic Women's Conference in Los Angeles and met
with Latino leaders in Philadelphia and Cleveland.