Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. are set to appear Thursday at the White House for a meeting with President Obama in which they are expected to seek his guidance on charting a path forward.

The reform effort blew up in 2007 after more than a year of work when Republican critics branded the effort as “amnesty” and the tide of public opinion turned strongly against the bill.

Graham, in fact, was booed at a Republican gathering in his state in 2006 for his work on comprehensive reform with Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Sen. McCain is conspicuously absent from the current talks; Graham remains at the table as the lone Republican supporter.

Schumer said comprehensive immigration reform is closer to reality than it appears.

“We only have a couple more things to get done,” he said Wednesday. “They’re hard. One is to get another Republican on the bill; one is to finally deal with the issue — to get business and labor on the same side on future flow on low-wage workers.”

A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide close to the debate said of the White House meeting, “They’re giving the president an update on where they stand, but they’re also reaching out to get support on securing that second Republican and for help in dealing with business and labor.”

Organized labor, in 2006 and 2007, fought any robust guest worker program, also called “future flow,” as Kennedy’s bill sought to create with the support of President George W. Bush.

Though a GOP aide with knowledge of the process told Fox News the effort is far from complete, Schumer maintained, “We’re getting real close. I’m optimistic.”

Immigrant rights groups have pushed to get a bill, even without another Republican joining, but Schumer said Wednesday, that’s not going to happen. “Senator Graham has been very good and generous and courageous in helping us move that bill forward. … He has always said he wants a second Republican.”

Anxious to avoid the explosive failure of the last effort, Schumer said emphatically, “We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan. Everyone agrees with that.”

Schumer said it has been a tough slog to get a second Republican, particularly since pro-reform GOP Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, himself a Cuban immigrant, recently retired. “It’s been difficult finding a second Republican,” he said. “We have four or five prospects we’re working on now. But if we can’t, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But we’re not giving up.”

One Republican senator who is thought to be in play is the newest member of the body, moderate Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. While Brown didn’t slam the door on a compromise, he did not sound anxious to deal with this issue now with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent.

Brown told Fox News he has not yet been contacted by either Schumer or Graham, but he is willing to take a look at their bill, even though he suggested now is the time for Congress to focus on jobs, not immigration.

“We’re doing health care, maybe immigration. The thing I haven’t heard enough about is jobs, job creation. It’s nonexistent. I think that’s a mistake.” Brown said, “Right now, people need jobs, period.”

When asked what must be in any immigration reform bill, Brown said, “You need a strong border enforcement. You need a strong E-verification. I…have always felt that part of the problem is that we haven’t provided the proper resources for people to be processed quickly enough. And when you have people waiting in line six, seven, eight, nine years in some instances, it’s a disincentive to (immigrate) legally…In terms of allowing people to step ahead of the people who are trying to do it legally, I have a real problem with that.”

In fact, that very issue is what tripped up the earlier effort, what’s commonly referred to as “the path to legalization.” The Kennedy-McCain bill laid out a series of hurdles for potential citizens to clear, a six-year process in which workers who were in the country illegally could apply for a six-year “conditional non-immigrant visa.” At the end of that period, a visa holder could apply for legal permanent residence if the person paid a $1,000 fine, passed a background check, and demonstrated an effort to learn English and civics.

Critics called this “amnesty,” and at the time, the House, then run by Republicans, passed a narrow, border security-only measure, and left Senate Republicans who might have supported Kennedy-McCain holding the bag. In the end, that handful of Republicans bolted and the bill went down in flames.

It is not likely the crowded Senate calendar can withstand another controversial debate this year, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continues to list it among his top priorities to tackle this year. Though Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, did not sound quite so sure, “Depends on support we get from the other side…I support comprehensive reform, but I’m going to leave that to Chuck.”

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – As Democrats in Washington celebrate the passage of healthcare reform after an arduous battle, a new documentary offers a glimpse at the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and deal-making that goes on as laws are made in the U.S. Congress.

The film, “The Senators’ Bargain,” follows the late Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and other key players in the failed effort to pass landmark immigration reform in 2007. It takes on the complicated task of showing how compromises are made to a bill even before it is debated by lawmakers.

“It is a portrait of lawmaking from the inside,” said Shari Robertson, who spent almost a decade making the film with her husband, Michael Camerini.

Part of the focus of the documentary, which airs on HBO on Wednesday, is Kennedy, a longtime champion of immigration.

“I do think that this is the portrait of him that people haven’t seen, the actual guy working,” Camerini said.

Kennedy, a liberal standard bearer and consummate congressional dealmaker known as “the lion of the Senate,” died of cancer last year, aged 77, after 47 years as a senator.

Robertson said Kennedy immediately agreed to the project in 2001 and was surprised someone wanted to tackle such an unglamorous subject.

“He did get a real kick out of it,” she said.

“IDEALISTIC TOWN”

Kennedy and immigration advocates, lawyers and politicians are seen in cramped Capitol Hill meeting rooms discussing what compromises to make with Republicans on immigration. Kennedy makes concessions in exchange for guarantees that millions of illegal immigrants could remain in the United States.

It shows Kennedy and others dealing with the bill’s demise in June 2007 after the compromise failed to muster enough votes among lawmakers or sufficient public support.

“It was really understanding that intersection of politics and policy-making,” Robertson said. “In a way we were like kids in a candy store because we were right in the middle of it.”

The story also answers some criticisms of Washington such as the length of time it takes a bill to wend its way to a vote and why politics can be so partisan.

People who have seen the documentary say, “Now I understand why you are never going to get exactly what you want because you have got to find a compromise,’” Robertson said.

With immigration now looming on President Barack Obama’s agenda, the public needs to understand more than ever the need to be able to negotiate, Camerini said.

“The lessons of healthcare are going to make people understand the necessity of a compromise much better,” he said.

After years of observing the system, Camerini said Washington was “a remarkably idealistic town” and he had come away with respect for the complicated process.

“The people who try to make big social change are pretty heroic,” he said. “They are in there fighting and you should meet them.”

(Editing by Mark Egan and Bill Trott)

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WASHINGTON - Democrats’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform could hurt them with Latino voters in November’s congressional elections, leaders of immigrant-rights groups warn.

But support for an immigration bill could come with its own political cost from voters on the other side of the issue, leaving lawmakers no easy choices.

“For most elected officials, it’s a no-win situation,” said John Garcia, a political-science professor at the University of Arizona. “It’s just such a volatile and divisive issue.”

Thousands of immigration-reform activists from across the nation - including some from Arizona - are expected to march on Washington, D.C., on Sunday to demand action from the Obama administration and the Democrat-led Congress.

If they don’t get it, they say, they are unlikely to switch their allegiance to Republicans, most of whom oppose any plan that clears the way for illegal immigrants to become citizens.

But disillusionment with Democrats could instead lead Latino voters to stay home on Election Day, a move that strategists say could affect Arizona’s three vulnerable Democratic House members: Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick, Gabrielle Giffords and Harry Mitchell.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesmen have cited a 2 to 4 percent increase in the Hispanic population in those congressional districts as a key factor that could boost the incumbents’ chances for re-election if more Latinos vote.

“It is showdown time,” activist Emma Lozano said at a recent Capitol Hill news conference called by members of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. “If you (Democratic leaders) don’t keep your promises, we will leave you where we found you. You have the power. You must use it, or you will lose it.”

Such threats may ring hollow to Democrats in swing districts, who likely have more to lose this year from supporting immigration reform than from ignoring it, political analysts say.

“The greater risk is turning out White (non-Hispanic) voters against you,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political scientist at Arizona State University. “It just goes to the basic rule of who votes, especially in a non-presidential year. It tends to be White voters, high-socioeconomic-status voters. So a perennial problem that these Hispanic advocacy groups face is making these threats credible.”

Democrats face counter-threats from groups that oppose any legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to become citizens.

“If they support these bills and they’re on the ballot in November, they’re goners,” said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee.

Gheen’s group is joining with the conservative “tea party” movement to counter the March 21 march by Hispanic rights’ groups with April 15 protests throughout the country against amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“Every candidate and member of Congress that is either dumb enough or out of touch with their constituents enough to go around campaigning for amnesty, please do so,” Gheen said. “It will help us identify you and defeat you.”

In the midst of these dueling threats, President Barack Obama and senior White House officials have been holding meetings with immigrant-rights groups and members of Congress to try to determine whether a bipartisan bill has a chance of passing this year.

“The president’s commitment to fixing our broken immigration system remains unwavering, and he continues to hope for bipartisan leadership on legislation,” said White House spokesman Adam Abrams.

The president recently met with Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who have been working for months to craft what they believe is a centrist bill to beef up enforcement of immigration laws while creating a path to citizenship for the estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The bill, which has not yet been introduced, reportedly includes the creation of a biometric identification card containing fingerprints or handprints that would ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants.

The legislation also would allow immigrants now in the country illegally to become citizens if they register with the government, pay taxes and a fine and wait their turn. If they fail to meet those requirements, they would face immediate deportation.

The bill seems to meet Obama’s main goals.

“The president believes we must continue to strengthen enforcement on our borders and crack down on employers who exploit undocumented workers to undercut American workers,” Abrams said. “And he believes we must resolve the status of the 12 million people who are here illegally - that they should have to register, pay a penalty for breaking the law and meet other obligations of legal immigrants such as paying taxes, or leave the country.”

However, Graham has said he is not willing to move ahead with the bill unless another Senate Republican joins him as a sponsor. So far, none has stepped forward.

Among the no-shows: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who led bipartisan efforts at reform in the past but has since shied away from the issue amid criticism from conservatives.

The issue’s divisiveness means Congress is unlikely to pass a reform bill before the election, despite prodding from the president, UA’s Garcia said.

Democrats cannot escape the issue forever. They know that the Latino voters who helped elect Obama in 2008 will be important in the 2012 presidential race and beyond as their numbers continue to grow, analysts say.

“Threats by Hispanic groups to withhold votes may not mean much this year, but that will surely change as the population trends continue,” ASU’s Espino said.

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As name call reports, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recognized that regardless of the president’s need for it to happen, referring to total immigration reform, now where we sit the mathematics makes that real difficult. President Obama is lined up to rendezvous with members of Congress on Thu. to debate the issue a meeting immigrant fans are enthusiastically billing as the opening bell on moving immigration reform forward. According to Gibbs, though , Obama is not intending to ring that bell anytime very soon. Gibbs asserted Obama hopes that later that we may have the start of formal debate on that..

All too commonly, warfare is the means by which one group conquers another folks’s land and lords over the overcame. To bring this situation to our own country, were not even the 1st Continentals who settled here immigrants who did not talk the local languages and actually didn’t pass inspection by the local inhabitants. The millions of folks misnamed Indians were here for a guestimated fifteen to 25,000 years before they were’discovered’ by the Continentals . These 2 races replayed a theme familiar to our species : the newbies believing the land and folk were for their taking while the native, even if curious and at first friendly, quickly resented the intruders. Not that there were not periods–no matter how brief–of friendship and mutual accommodation.

Would the Travellers have survived if it were not for the help of the local tribe? But humans, sadly, are terribly parochial and dichotomize people into We and They. We adhere to our own family, country, co-religionists and others like ourselves and are susceptible to be suspicious, if not hostile, to strangers. The conferences of 2 races may range between raised eyebrows and avoidance to hostility and wars. Misunderstandings play a part. For instance, the postulate of the Continentals was the possession of land with the building of fences whilst the Local Americans’ was of sharing and, and if not mutual respect, live and let live, including benefiting from trade. But let us not romanticize the Local Americans. Whilst the US has been graced with the various resources needed for the industrial age, we’ve had as an invaluable advantage a massive reservoir of folks that immigrated–or were brought as slaves–from all parts of the planet. These races provided the work to make us the most technically sophisticated country on the world. Regardless of those among us who were–or are–intolerant toward newcomers, we had the biggest influx of’foreigners’ in history. When I used to be a kid, I recall the title of a book referring to our numbers as 100,000,00. Even the most xenophobic would find it not easy to deny–or disprove–that the variety and numbers of our races have enriched us not only economically but culturally too. Though my granddad and his 2 boys immigrated to flee pogroms and military conscription in Russia, they planned to bring my pop, then a decade old, and my grandmama, to this country.

They were extraordinarily like immigrants whose men folks come first, get roles, build themselves and then have the means to bring the rest of the family. However, they didn’t notice that World War I and the Russian Revolution would upset their plans. What was to be a short separation lengthened into over 8 years. At the point, Congress, politically divided then as now, found a patchwork compromise : you could bring in your youngsters with one condition. They needed to be children. So he stated his age as being 2 years younger. I asked my grandchild’s primary school assembly, where I had been invited to debate my novel’Land of Dreams,’ what my pop should have done. Hands waved desperately and then all but one child concluded,’He should lie!’ I was relieved that I could tell the youngsters–and the attending teachers and principal–how the tale ended. After WWII, my pop returned to his Russian birthplace and regardless of the war’s devastation, discovered that his town hall was still standing. Or Japanese-Americans, even voters, to be exonerated after their having wasted years in our WWII concentration camps. We now are again discussing the issue of immigration. Whilst there are millions of newcomers who are undocumented–a term I like and is more correct than illegal–they make up a projected one quarter of rural, building trades, domestic, resort and cafe employees.

Regardless of our employers’ desperate need for these low paid employees, Arizona, in 2004, sharply limited these employees from entering the state. The result : farmers were not able to get employees to crop their crops, just about a bln bucks worth of stuff rotted in the fields. The xenophobic congressmen not only forestalled undocumented workers from making their low salary, but they also mistreated their’legal’ indigenous–and citizen–farmers. Our politicized patchwork of immigration compromises has made a contribution to the issue.

We permitted four hundred thousand Mexican employees to go into the country legally, work, and come home. Relations would remain in Mexico and not need to come here to stay together.

Congress annulled this jointly profitable and controllable arrangement–called the braceros program–in an anti-foreign pique in the 1960’s. One does not need to be a mathematician to realize what happened when our country required these employees and these employees required roles. But the govt. Did come to its senses and faced up to reality, in 1983, Congress finally enabled 3,000,000 employees to build themselves as’legals.’ Today there are those that appear shocked–or ignorant–when such offers are made. An approximate 3,000,000 Mexican farmers went broke, causing desperate families, in order to survive, to cross our border to gain employment. The last fact : states like Japan, with restrictive immigration policies, will in another generation have too few employees to support people who will retire. In our country, the youngsters of these immigrants,’legal’ and’illegal,’ will be sustaining a lot of us when we retire.

Their youngsters enter the full range of roles, blue collar and pro, further enriching our country. Actually, plenty of’illegal’ employees pay taxes and every one of them purchase billions of bucks worth of products, adding to the wealth of our country. An answer to the immigration issue is complicated. But instead of a patchwork of ineffectual and self-defeating band helps, we should think about tricky but elemental solutions. These will require world cooperation. So long as there are starving or poorly paid employees on the planet, they’ll seek work to support themselves and their families.

If these folks had roles at home, few would come here.

There are a lot of reasons, they include discrimination, low or untrustworthy salary and their longing for their homeland and families. What’s required is a global effort to enhance living standards around the planet, just as the commercial and commercial interests have their world policies to invest and earn money. An investment in folk will pay in the future for our–and other nations’–prosperity. After World War II, instead of punishing our enemies, we bankrolled our Marshall Plan, which provided help to Germany and Japan. Instead of their folks fleeing the devastation of the war, they managed to reconstruct and improve their lives at home.

As I consider my personal family, with its latest immigrants and longtime residents ( my grandchild’s pa is an Apache ), we’ve much to gain by developing the means for each one of us to prosper. Instead of our considering selfish and parochial solutions to the issues of immigration, which are self-defeating and impose difficulties on others, we must understand that to survive as a species, with immigration and other worldwide issues, we must consider that every one of us are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. That is required not only for their survival, but ours as well. ]]> http://www.usaimmigrationreform.com/immigrants-legal-illegal-or-just-human/feed http://www.usaimmigrationreform.com/take-your-stand-on-immigration http://www.usaimmigrationreform.com/take-your-stand-on-immigration#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:47:48 +0000 http://www.usaimmigrationreform.com/?p=214 I may barely pick up a copy of the news without reading some title story about the newest government position on the immigration issues our country is working with. Each political leader has a different viewpoint on how our country should be handling the difficulties before us. I, for one, have a tough time seeing our country become so divided over things that clearly don’t matter when there are miles more serious things occuring on the planet. I am getting annoyed seeing our country divided about immigration when there are many thousands of folk starving and dying of preventable sicknesses in plenty of states of the Earth.

We like our Yankee society just so and no-one from the outside is allowed to come in and interrupt how we love it. As a newshound for my local paper, many of us have been asking me to pen a column on my opinion about the immigration rumpus which has been occuring recently. On the other hand, I believe we’d do well to recollect that at 1 time or another, all the families that call themselves Yankee were at some point immigrants to our land. How then, are we able to take a country that is comparatively so young and one whose voters all originated from other lands and all of a sudden put a standard on who can and can’t enter and live in our lands? At what point did we, as Yank voters and even the Yankee executive, earn a right to select who should be permitted to become part of our country and who cannot? If we take a major study the results of immigration on our existing society, we’ll probably see just as many advantages of immigration as we see issues.

These jobs are critical to our countrywide economy and well being, and thus we want to think before we act to strictly on immigration. The bottom line for me is that folks have price. We want to care more for the health and lives of folk than we care about whether they are disturbing us. We want to give everybody, if thru immigration or not, an equal opportunity to enjoy the liberties we love.

John McCain, R-Ariz, Sen. It mixes toughness with fairness, making a new non permanent visa program that provides a legal flow of employees.

In addition, reducing the decade-long backlog in family-based immigration would reunite families quicker and make it doubtful that folks would cross the border unlawfully to be with their family. Congress and the administration must act wisely as they weigh their choices. We have had enough’quick fixes’ that have made an already infeasible system worse. We won’t control our borders -, or augment our traditional security -, till we enact total immigration reform. Deborah Notkin is president of the Yank Immigration Barristers organisation. - NU.