After simmering on and off last year, the immigration debate has erupted into full boil on Capitol Hill.
Ten years ago, Congress took action to stem illegal immigration, approving sanctions on employers who hire illegal aliens. In 1990, it adjusted rules for legal immigration. Now both chambers are waist deep in controversial bills to cut back on both forms of immigration.The House begins debate Wednesday on a massive immigration bill. The Senate Judiciary Committee is midway through a markup of parallel legislation, with floor action set for April.
All this effort is expected to culminate in some new immigration restrictions that will be signed into law this year. But the conflicts and developments thus far, including sharp divisions among Republicans on whether to curb legal immigration, suggest that the final product may be less sweeping than the initial proposals in either chamber.
Immigration presents political opportunity but also great challenges for GOP congressional leaders.
It's an issue of intense concern to many Americans, especially in some key election states with huge immigrant populations, such as California and Florida.
Yet business groups - a key GOP constituency - oppose new curbs on legal immigration of foreign workers, insisting they can't find enough qualified Americans to fill many jobs, especially in high-tech industries. Supporters of the restrictions say companies are merely trying to cut costs by replacing American workers with foreigners willing to work for less.
The tension was seen in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where six of the panel's 10 Republicans voted March 14 to divide a GOP-sponsored immigration proposal into separate bills on illegal and legal immigration. The House will take a similar vote this week on whether to split its immigration bill.
Dividing the issues would reduce the prospects for significant cuts in legal immigration, which suits many members just fine.
"We will not allow unhappiness with illegal immigration to cause us to make imprudent changes in legal immigration laws," said Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., who led the committee effort to divide the Senate bills.
Democrats are also divided on whether to cut legal immigration. But they'll have relatively little say in the matter.
Polls have long showed a majority of Americans favor a reduction in immigration, and the politicians are mindful of the cheers that Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan drew with his calls for a moratorium on legal immigration.
Both an influential bipartisan commission on immigration and the Clinton administration have recommended some reductions in legal immigration.
But business organizations opposed to limits on importing foreign workers have aligned with an array of ethnic, religious and pro-family groups that object to proposed cuts in family reunification visas and a possible cap on refugee admissions. These groups say that there's no proof that legal immigration is overburdening the country and that cuts could actually harm economic growth by depriving the country of energetic new workers and those with special skills.
Republicans already have moved to accommodate the concerns of business groups, their traditional political allies, regarding access to skilled workers. But that strategy could get them into some trouble as Democrats push the issue of protecting the U.S. work force.
Curbing illegal immigration is a more popular objective, but even that issue presents difficult tests of will.
For instance, most immigration experts say government cannot keep out illegal immigrants without a more effective method of keeping them from holding jobs. Yet lawmakers and lobbyists objected vehemently to a proposed worker verification system, and many seem unwilling to bear the political or financial costs of doing more in this area.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)