An agreement between the labor and business communities would clear one of the last hurdles for an overall deal on immigration legislation in the Senate, which the bipartisan group hopes to introduce early next month.
“We are very close, closer than we’ve ever been,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of a bipartisan group of senators working on comprehensive immigration legislation. “We are very optimistic, but there are a few issues remaining.”
The United States Chamber of Commerce and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main federation of labor unions, have been in discussions parallel to those of the Senate group, and have reached a tentative agreement about the size and scope of a temporary guest worker program, which would grant up to 200,000 new visas annually for low-skilled workers. The labor-business talks came close to breaking down last Friday, on the eve of a two-week Congressional recess, over the issue of what the pay levels should be for low-skilled immigrants, often employed at restaurants or on construction projects, who could be brought in when employers said they faced labor shortages.
One of the last sticking points in the business-labor negotiations has been the specific type of jobs that would be excluded from the program. The nation’s construction unions, officials in the talks said, have succeeded in persuading the negotiators to exclude certain types of higher-skilled jobs — including crane operators and electricians — from the guest worker program.
Eliseo Medina, the secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union and one of labor’s most influential voices on immigration issues, said, “We may be very close to a point where the senators will have an announcement soon.”
One official involved in the talks said that the business community was likely to see a number of visas that it considered satisfactory, while the agreement on wages pleased labor because it would not affect the labor market adversely.
This official said that after the business-labor talks came close to breaking down last week, some union officials pressed the labor negotiators to show more flexibility to avoid having the momentum toward immigration reform break down over the guest worker issue. The official said that at the same time, some business leaders and Republican lawmakers pressed the Chamber to be more flexible on the guest worker issue so as not to derail the overall immigration overhaul.
“A lot of the fine details are still being hammered out,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because the business and labor representatives agreed to a news blackout about the talks.
When President George W. Bush pushed to revamp the nation’s immigration laws in 2007, the inability of business and labor to agree on a plan for guest workers was one of the main reasons that effort failed.
Tamar Jacoby, the president of ImmigrationWorks, a group that represents small businesses on immigrations matters, said business and labor had reached agreement on the highly contentious issue of how many guest workers would be admitted each year.
“The way it’s structured, it will start, according to press reports, at 20,000 visas a year, and it can grow as high as 200,000, but there is a formula that will allow it to grow and shrink according to economic needs,” she said.
Ms. Jacoby said that the formula agreed to was not flexible enough to meet the needs of specific industries in specific places.
The number of guest workers allowed in would increase as the nation’s unemployment rate fell and the number of job openings increased. A federal commission would also assess the need for guest workers, with an eye to shortages in specific industries and communities.
“It will work like an accordion, based on shortages,” said one official involved in the talks.
In the negotiations, officials said, business had pushed to pay guest workers the minimum wage, while the labor negotiations were demanding they be paid the median wage in the industries in which they would work.
Two officials involved in the talks said there was a tentative agreement for guest workers to be paid the prevailing industry wage previously used in the guest worker program. These officials said that employers who experienced a labor shortage even after the national guest worker quota was filled could request a “safety valve” exemption to bring in workers, but at a higher wage rate than the prevailing wage while also paying additional fees.
Though the bipartisan group of senators left for their two-week break with their immigration negotiations stalled over the guest worker program, they have continued to work while Congress is out of session. On Wednesday, four of the group’s members — Senators Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado; Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona; John McCain, Republican of Arizona; and Mr. Schumer — toured Nogales, Ariz., a city on the Mexican border.
Speaking at a Chamber of Commerce event in Columbia, S.C., on Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the group, expressed confidence that the Senate would reach a full deal in the coming days.
“We’re sort of stuck on the ten-yard line,” he said, “but I’m optimistic we’ll get a bill in the next few weeks.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/politics/guest-worker-program-low-skilled-immigrants.html?partner=rss&emc=rss