WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee unveiled draft legislation yesterday that could allow hundreds of thousands of foreigners to fill jobs in the United States for periods of up to six years.
The draft circulated by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., would also authorize millions of illegal immigrants who arrived in this country before Jan. 4, 2004, to remain indefinitely, along with their spouses and children, as long as they registered with the Department of Homeland Security, paid back taxes and remained law-abiding and employed, among other conditions.
The proposal would require employers to attest that they had tried to recruit American workers before bringing in additional foreigners and to pay prevailing wages. The proposal would not place a restriction on the number of foreigners who could come to the United States temporarily under the guest worker program. Those workers would not have the right to become permanent residents or citizens.
The bill doesn't mention whether illegal immigrants already in the United States, described as “conditional non-immigrants,” should be accorded that opportunity.
The legislation will serve as the blueprint for the first congressional debate on the future of the nation's illegal immigrants since President Bush called for a guest worker plan in 2004. With his draft, Specter was striving to reconcile the warring factions within his own party and address concerns raised by business leaders, labor officials and advocates for immigrants who have battled fiercely in recent months over the shape of a proposal that would radically reshape immigration policy and the workplace.
The debate on the legislation, which also includes measures to strengthen border security, is expected to begin in the Judiciary Committee next week. Any legislation that passed the Senate would have to be reconciled with a bill passed by the House in December that sought to tighten security along the nation's borders but made no provision for guest workers or legal status for illegal workers already in the United States.
“The committee must grapple with a realistic means of bringing out from the shadows the possible 11 million illegal aliens in the United States,” Specter wrote in a letter to his colleagues, saying he hoped the draft would build consensus. “We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws.”
