Immigration Reform -- Take One

The proposed immigration reform bill hammered out in the Senate last week is starting to draw fire from all sides. That may be a good thing -- legislation that makes everyone equally unhappy is preferable to legislation that only one side likes. But I've blogged about immigration reform before. I know it's very difficult to find consensus on the issues. If only for my own benefit, I'm going to try to itemize the key elements of the bill as they affect employers and employees -- recognizing that the additional issues of border security, amnesty, family continuity and establishing legal status must also be considered.

Employer Verification of Legal Status

A big expansion over current verification practices, the bill proposes an Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) that requires employers to certify the legal status of all employees (some 146 million at last count) every three years. CEOs will sign off on the certification. In a Wall Street Journal article (log in required), Randel Johnson, a US Chamber of Commerce vice president, termed the plan "throwing a huge net to catch a few minnows." Highlighting the strange bedfellows this legislation may create, the same article quotes American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson Tim Sparapani: "The threat this poses to our privacy is extraordinary."

H-1B Visa Changes

The controversial H-1B visa program for high-skilled foreign workers also gets an overhaul. The plan raises the number of H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 annually and could increase further based on demand. This year's entire quota of H-1B visas was filled the first day. An additional proposal offers "unlimited" H-1B visas for non-citizens who have earned advanced degrees from a US university or from overseas institutions, in the case of those who earned advanced degrees in math, technology or engineering.

On the other side, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers is raising money to run an ad in Congressional Quarterly, seeking to block any increase in H-1B visas. The ad states: "Thousands of highly educated and skilled U.S. hi-tech professionals have lost jobs and are unable to find new work because companies like Microsoft want to hire cheaper foreign labor."

New Rules for Low-Skilled and Guest Workers

For less-skilled workers, there are two new visa categories -- Z and Y. The Z visa provides current illegal immigrants with a path -- albeit convoluted -- to green-card status, and attempts to avoid disrupting those industries, such as food processing, restaurants and construction, that heavily depend on immigrant labor. The Y visa is a guest worker program that, together with a separate program specifically for agricultural workers, would provide legal status for low-skilled workers in some targeted industries.

The legislation is just starting to make its way through Congress. We'll see what develops over the next few weeks. For more background on immigration policies and issues, try these articles:

• "Immigration and the US Workplace"
• "Is the Melting Pot Boiling Over?"
• "Hiring Rules for Non-US Job Seekers"

And these blog suggestions:

• The H-1B Visa -- Everywhere You Want to Be Working?
• Immigration, Workers and the Blogosphere
• A Workday Without Immigrants
• The Border Line -- a blog on immigration issues offered by the Austin (TX) American-Statesman
• ImmigrationProf Blog -- authored by three professors at the University of California, Davis, School of Law

Share this post: Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, etc.