DeLay Sees Chance of Immigration Deal

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/politics/09immig.html

February 9, 2005
DeLay Sees Chance of Immigration Deal
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

y The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, said Tuesday that conservatives might be able to compromise with President Bush on his proposal allowing illegal immigrants to work in the United States legally.

Such a compromise could entail, for example, requiring illegal immigrants to return to their native countries to apply for the program, Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. DeLay said he talked recently with the president, who has advocated a guest worker program that would be open to workers who are currently in the country illegally as well as to newcomers.

"He doesn't discount the notion, for instance, that you have to apply for it in your country of origin," Mr. DeLay said of the president. "He thought that was a great idea."<snip>

[FloridaPat]

1. Let's advertise the job to American citizens first before it gets

filled by these illegals. Say advertise for 6 months and if no Americans want it, fill it with someone else. Once problem with computer programmers using foreigners is that once their job is over, no one is kicking them out of the country. I think that should be enforced. As soon as the job is over, they are escorted to the airport and sent home. If they want another job, they have to reapply overseas.

[mudderfudder77]

8. The vast majority

of jobs these foreigners are filling are low paying manual labor jobs. Clearly in the IT sector there is a large influx (especially from India) of foreign workers. But those jobs are the exception to the rule.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

2. I wish immigration policies

also discussed issues regarding the interests of the legal immigrants who are here but have to wait forever to get a green card and/or have to pay high fees to get anywhere with USCIS.

I deal with these people everyday and I have dealt with the backlogs for legal immigrants myself (I'm a legal immigrant) since 1987. For instance, I deal primarily with legal immigrants of extraordinary ability in the arts, science, business and athletics (fashion models, fashion personnel, entertainers, actors, directors, painters, etc.). The process to obtain lawful employment in the U.S. is very expensive and the USCIS often makes mistakes (ie. lost files, lost checks, etc.).

On top of that, processing times are very long (unless you want to shell out an extra $1000 in some cases) and we are getting a taste of new internal (but unmentioned and unpublicized) policies whereby USCIS tries new and complex delay tactics to justify to the press that backlogs are being reduced, when it is not the case (they just delay cases for no reason, asking for additional evidence that was already submitted originally or denying cases on a mistaken interpretation of the regulations or ...; I can continue ad nauseam).

Most people think of illegal immigration if they think of immigration at all. However, the process for legal immigrants is often so cumbersome and so underfunded that it's forgotten amidst all the important talk about illegal immigration.

[Godhumor]

3. In this situation now

My wife is a Japanese immigrant (we met while I lived there), and she has now been in this country since October, 2003.

I had to get my senator involved just to allow her to come here, as USCIS had misplaced her fiancee petition.

Last week I had to call one of my senator's office again, as she has lived here for almost 1 and a half years without having her residency interview. The immigration liason listened to my story and figured out that USCIS screwed up big time (They assigned her two A-numbers, alien registration numbers, basically.). Now, she is on the ball trying to help out, but it will probably be late summer before anything happens.

[papau]

4. In business one assumes a $10,000 cost and a $30,000 salary savings

by hiring from overseas.

The $10K is for a lawyer and the advertising for a local American to do the job in a weekly Newspaper in Alaska.

[primavera]

6. Actually, the employer has to pay whatever the prevailing wage is

A business can't get a labor-based visa petition approved unless they agree to pay the immigrant exactly as much as a US worker doing the same job would be paid. You can use wage surveys as your basis for determining the prevailing wage for a job, and those can be manipulated slightly, but not to the tune of $30K.

[papau]

7. Prevailing wage for an "executive" with technical training can easily

have a range of over 30,000. Internal "executive" promotions always had a huge cost over outside hire!

Quite a reverse from the 60's, 70's and early 80's when the "new hires" were getting the same as folks with 10 yrs in the job - because the 10 yrs in job folks got tiny annual raises - and you had to job hop to improve salary.

The salary surveys are very easy to use to get a cost savings (albeit not 30,000 just from a wiggle with the survey for a job that normally costs 40,000 - sorry -- :-) ).

However we did not do that for Canadian hires - since titles and duties are too similiar to fake

But East Asia is another matter (we had PHD's brought in as "lab tech's" in one of our companies - and $110,000 executive actuarial slots filled at $80,000 - actuarial salaries have dropped over last 10 years because of the competition).

[SodoffBush]

5. What country would be dumb enough to accept Delay?

:shrug:

Don't get me wrong. I'm happier than hell to see the bug leave the US.