Deal On Immigration Reform Bill

Senators strike deal on immigration reform bill
Compromise deal would legalize millions of illegal immigrants

The Associated Press

May 17, 2007

WASHINGTON - Key senators in both parties and the White House announced agreement Thursday on an immigration overhaul that would grant quick legal status to millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and fortify the border.

The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S and a separate program to cover agricultural workers. Skills and education-level would for the first time be weighted over family connections in deciding whether future immigrants should get permanent legal status. New high-tech employment verification measures also would be instituted to ensure that workers are here legally.

The compromise came after weeks of painstaking closed-door negotiations that brought the most liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans together with President Bush's Cabinet officers to produce a highly complex measure that carries heavy political consequences.

Bush praises deal
Bush called it "a much-needed solution to the problem of illegal immigration in this country" and said, if approved, the proposal "delivers an immigration system that is secure, productive, orderly and fair."

"With this bipartisan agreement, I am confident leaders in Washington can have a serious, civil and conclusive debate so I can sign comprehensive reform into law this year," he said in a written statement Thursday.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, his party's lead negotiator on the deal, hailed it as "the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America."

Anticipating criticism from conservatives, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said, "It is not amnesty. This will restore the rule of law."

The accord sets the stage for what promises to be a bruising battle next week in the Senate on one of Bush's top non-war priorities.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the proposal a "starting point" for that debate, but added that it needs improvement.

"I have serious concerns about some aspects of this proposal, including the structure of the temporary worker program and undue limitations on family immigration," Reid said in a statement.

'Point system' breakthrough
The key breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so-called "point system" that prioritizes immigrants' education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards.

The immigration issue also divides both parties in the House, which isn't expected to act unless the Senate passes a bill first.

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.

A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called "triggers" had been activated.

Those workers would have to return home after work stints of two years, with little opportunity to gain permanent legal status or ever become U.S. citizens. They could renew their guest worker visas twice, but would be required to leave for a year in between each time.

Democrats had pressed instead for guest workers to be permitted to stay and work indefinitely in the U.S.

In perhaps the most hotly debated change, the proposed plan would shift from an immigration system primarily weighted toward family ties toward one with preferences for people with advanced degrees and sophisticated skills. Republicans have long sought such revisions, which they say are needed to end "chain migration" that harms the economy, while some Democrats and liberal groups say it's an unfair system that rips families apart.

Family connections alone would no longer be enough to qualify for a green card — except for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens.

New limits would apply to U.S. citizens seeking to bring foreign-born parents into the country.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Work Visas May Work Against the U.S.

Indian outsourcers file the most applications for temporary H-1B visas. Are they using them to train staff for jobs abroad?

by Peter Elstrom

America's visa program for temporary workers was originally set up to allow U.S. companies to bring skilled workers who are in short supply to the U.S. Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), Oracle (ORCL), and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) have been active participants in the program, hiring foreign workers for specialized computer programming jobs and positions managing projects with overseas staff.

The visas, known as H-1Bs, are popular enough that President George W. Bush is calling for an increase in the cap on the number of workers who can come to the U.S. under the program. "We've got to expand what's called H-1B visas," he said in a January speech. "It makes no sense to say to a young scientist in India, you can't come to America to help this [country] develop technologies that help us deal with our problems."
Outsourcing Conduit…

But a review of new information from the federal government suggests that the companies benefiting most from the temporary worker program aren't U.S. companies at all. Rather, they appear to be Indian outsourcing firms, which often hire workers from India to train in the U.S. before returning home to work. Data for the fiscal year 2006, which ended last September, show that 7 of the top 10 applicants for H-1B visas are Indian companies. Giants Infosys Technologies (INFY) and Wipro (WIT) took the top two spots, with 22,600 and 19,400 applications, respectively. The company with the third most applications is Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH), which is based in Teaneck, N.J., but has most of its operations in India. All three companies provide services to U.S. companies from India, including technology support and back-office processing.

The only other U.S. companies among the top 10 are the accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche and consultancy Accenture (ACN). They rank seventh and ninth, with 8,000 and 7,000 applications, respectively.

The dominance of Indian outsourcing companies raises public policy questions about the temporary visa program. Some experts say that while the intent of H-1B visas may be to help U.S. companies hire workers with rare skills, the effect in some cases may be to facilitate moving jobs abroad. The issue has also sparked concern among some prominent U.S. tech companies, which worry that outsourcers could abuse the visa program, harming the tech firms' ability to attract foreign talent.

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, says it appears that Indian firms may be using their H-1Bs to bring in workers from their home countries to make them more effective at outsourcing jobs in India. "The visa program serves a good purpose when it brings in the best and the brightest," says Hira, who is on leave at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute and crunched the recently released visa data to compile the list of top applicants. He says that as recently as 1998 eight of the top 10 H-1B visa applicants were U.S. companies. "It serves a bad purpose when it's used to facilitate outsourcing."
Or Competitive Edge?

The Indian outsourcing firms say that's a misinterpretation of the data. They argue that the temporary visa program allows outsourcing firms to help U.S. companies become more flexible and ultimately more competitive in the global economy. Wipro has more than 4,000 employees in the U.S., and roughly 2,500 are on H-1B visas. About 1,000 new temporary workers come to the country each year, while 1,000 rotate back to India, with improved skills to serve clients. "Our goal is to make our customers more competitive," says Laxman Badiga, Wipro's chief information officer. An Infosys spokeswoman said executives from that company were not available for comment.

The government visa data cover only the number of applications for visas, not the number actually awarded. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services releases the identities of companies that apply for H-1B visas, not those that receive them. A spokesman for USCIS, which is part of the Homeland Security Dept., says it won't discuss individual companies because of privacy issues.

Still, the number of visas awarded is likely correlated to the number of applications. Efran Hernandez, chief of business and trade services for USCIS, says H-1B visas are awarded on a "first-come, first-serve" basis and there is no preference given to U.S. companies over non-U.S. companies. "You have to be a U.S. employer," says Hernandez. "That doesn't mean you have to be a U.S. company."

No Market Test for H-1B

In addition, the temporary visa program includes no requirement that companies in the U.S. try to hire American employees before they turn to foreign workers. To obtain a permanent visa, companies must conduct and provide to the government a labor market test, in which they demonstrate that they sought to hire American workers first. But the H-1B temporary visa program mandates no such market test. Instead, companies are required only to pay the prevailing wages and benefits for a certain job in a certain market.

The government, including USCIS, says that the provision means that most companies are going to hire Americans, because there's no financial advantage to choosing a non-U.S. worker. But Hira says Indian companies could choose to hire workers from India for training purposes, rather than financial gain. Government officials acknowledge that companies that want to give preference to workers from other countries could theoretically do so. "There's nothing built into the law to stop that," says Hernandez.

Many U.S. companies are enthusiastic supporters of the H-1B visa program. Tech companies may be the most active participants, but the visas are also used by companies from General Electric (GE) and Boeing (BA) to Lehman Brothers (LEH) and Caterpillar (CAT). Companies have been lobbying the government to increase the cap on the number of H-1B visas from the current 65,000. (Because there are exceptions for certain kinds of jobs, the number of visas issued regularly exceeds that level.)
Squeeze on Temporary Visas

Top technology companies would like to see the cap almost twice as high as it is now. The Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), whose backers include Apple (AAPL), Dell (DELL), eBay (EBAY), and Intel, last year asked that the cap be raised to 115,000. The group says that bringing foreign workers with very specialized skills to the U.S.—both temporarily and permanently—is critical to increase innovation and competitiveness. "Visas are a key component of the innovation agenda," says Kara Calvert, director of government relations for the council. "It's really important to grow the economy here rather than overseas."

Yet the ITIC has become concerned in recent months that the temporary visa program is not being used for its original purpose. The council's members may not be able to get the workers they want from abroad because the numerous applications from non-U.S. companies mean fewer H-1B visas are available for U.S. companies. "We hit the cap earlier and earlier," Calvert says. "We think it's important to ensure that the visas are used for the purpose for which they were intended."

One reason for the squeeze may be that Indian outsourcers have boosted their visa applications just as the cap has been lowered. Wipro applied for 3,100 visas in 2001, when the H-1B cap was 195,000 workers, according to Hira's calculations. Wipro applied for six times that many H-1B visas last year, when the cap was a third of the previous total.
No Easy Answers

Wipro's Badiga says Indian companies are helping to create good jobs in the U.S. and fostering innovation. The jobs that Wipro offers in the U.S. to both Indian and U.S. workers, he says, are more skilled positions for high-level software design or important customer relations. What he calls "rote programming jobs" are done from India. He says that the H-1B visa program allows Wipro workers to get valuable experience in the States and be more effective at serving customers in the U.S. "The key question is whether we can create the best value chain to help our customers be as competitive as possible," says Badiga.

Even critics say that there are no easy solutions for revising the temporary worker program. Restricting the ability of Indian outsourcing companies to use H-1Bs, for example, may not stop them from being used for more effective outsourcing. Accenture, an active participant in the program and one of the top U. S. outsourcing firms, could hypothetically use the visas in exactly the same way that Wipro and Infosys do. A spokeswoman for Accenture did not return calls seeking comment.

U.S. tech companies may push for revisions to the H-1B program. They could ask that Congress limit the number of visas that go to non-U.S. companies or that the identities of the recipients be disclosed fully and speedily. President Bush has said that he wants to work with the Democratic Congress on new immigration and visa policies, although it's unclear what shape those reforms might take (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/24/07, "Salesman In Chief"). "If companies are abusing those visas, that hurts U.S. companies," says the ITIC's Calvert. "We want to be at the table when the discussions [on H-1Bs] occur."

Elstrom is news director at BusinessWeek.com.

Chicago Ordered to Dump Olympics Logo

Chicago must remove the image of a torch from its logo for its 2016 Summer Olympic bid because it violates International Olympic Committee rules of conduct for host-city hopefuls, the Tribune has learned.

Chicago has been subject to those rules since February, when the IOC executive board decided they applied to a city as soon as it expressed interest in bidding. But the Chicago bid committee was not told to change the city's logo until this week.

The IOC's bid rules state that logos ``shall not contain the Olympic symbol, the Olympic motto, the Olympic flag, any other Olympic-related imagery (e.g. flame, torch, medal, etc.), slogan, designation or other indicia or the distorted version thereof or a design confusingly similar thereto.''

``Logos change in various phases of the bid process,'' Chicago 2016 spokesman Michael Kontos said. ``We are going to abide by the rules of this phase of the process, as we have abided by the rules of the previous phases.

``Several weeks ago we did seek clarification whether the logo in its current fashion would be seen as out of sync with the rules going forward. We received clarification this week.'' Chicago has begun the process of developing a new logo to convey its Olympic vision and concept, according to Kontos.

The IOC is fiercely protective of its imagery and nomenclature, especially that of the Olympic rings and the words ``Olympic'' and ``Olympics'' for financial reasons.

It has sued businesses, including mom-and-pop restaurants, that use those words in their name. To critics who call such legal action heavy-handed, IOC officials reply it is necessary to protect the investment of sponsors who pay as much as $100 million every four years for global rights to use the words and symbols.

Separately, the IOC released its 2016 candidate acceptance procedure today, a procedure that does allow bidding cities to use the Olympic rings once they are named finalists. That will happen in June 2008.

That date is among the key dates announced by the IOC as it officially began the 2016 bid process today, some two months earlier than expected. IOC officials previously had said they did not expect to create a timeline until after the July 4 vote for host of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The IOC's announcement said the vote for the 2016 host will be Oct. 2, 2009, in Copenhagen.

Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro are expected to submit bids. Officials in Rome, Prague, St. Petersburg, Doha, Qatar, and Baku, Azerbaijan all have said they are considering bids.

The IOC divides the candidacy process into two phases. Phase I began today with the invitation to all 203 National Olympic Committees to submit by Sept. 13 an applicant city for the 2016 Games.

The cities must also pay a nonrefundable $150,000 application fee by Oct. 1.

The interested cities must then submit an application based on an IOC questionnaire, by Jan. 14, 2008. In that filing, each city must provide letters of guarantee related to marketing, hotel standards and entry to their country.

The last guarantee is for ``free access to and free movement around the host country for all accredited persons on the basis of a passport (or equivalent document) and the Olympic identity and accreditation card referred to in the Olympic Charter."

That has become problematic for U.S. bidders because of visa restrictions implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The United States Olympic Committee has been working with government officials to resolve the issue.

The IOC executive board will review the application files for approximately six months to determine which cities should become finalists, a designation that implies the city is capable of hosting the Olympics.

That begins Phase II, when the finalists pay a nonrefundable $500,000 candidate fee and submit by Feb. 12, 2009, a detailed description of their Olympic plans.

This candidacy filing, which usually comprises three volumes and about 600 pages, will be used by the IOC evaluation commission when it visits each finalist. Dates for those visits are yet to be determined but likely will be in April and May 2009.

One month before the vote, the evaluation commission will publish a report based on the candidacy filings and the visits.

These reports have become increasingly more informational and less judgmental, and the evaluation commission almost certainly will issue no rankings or recommendations based on the evaluation.

Cities cannot promote their bids internationally until Phase II begins, but they can send delegations to designated events to talk with international sports officials. Chicago already has done in Africa and China.

By Philip Hersh
Tribune Olympic sports reporter

Couple Finds Dead Woman's Body During Home Tour

JANESVILLE, Wis. -- A real estate agent will likely do a house check before bringing in prospective customers after one couple happened upon a homeowner in bed -- dead.

Linda Chabucos-Galow, a real estate agent with Shorewest, stood in the dining room while Justin and Colleen McKeen walked through a house Monday night.

Before long, she heard Colleen scream.

"I thought, 'What's wrong?' Maybe it was a dead mouse or something," Chabucos-Galow said.

But then she peered into the bedroom and saw the body of Linda L. O'Leary, 55, the owner of the home. She had been dead for about two weeks, officials said.

"It looked like a Halloween prop," Chabucos-Galow said.

The uncovered body was wearing dark shorts. Chabucos-Galow said O'Leary's legs were wrapped in material that appeared similar to cheesecloth or support hose.

"If we spent five minutes in there, I'd be stretching it," Chabucos-Galow said.

She told the couple: "'We need to leave. This is not right. We need to get out of here."'

Gale Kent, the Coldwell Banker First United Realty agent who listed the house, said the property was for sale "for a while," but wouldn't say how many times it had been shown in recent weeks.

"I don't want to say anything because I haven't talked to the police yet," Kent said.

An autopsy determined O'Leary had been dead for two to three weeks, Rock County Coroner Jenifer Keach said Wednesday. The cause of death remained under investigation, but O'Leary appeared to have died of natural causes and no foul play was suspected, the coroner said.

Chabucos-Galow said she set up the showing without knowing the homeowner's identity.

After entering the home, she noticed a faint odor but thought it was from the mess in the house or the countertop full of dishes. She saw unopened mail.

"I've smelled death. I know what death smells like," she said. "I can't believe my sinuses were that bad."

Associated Press
Published May 2, 2007