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.

© Copyright 2000 The Wall Street Journal