March 27, 2007

Will Dick Durbin block immigration "reform" (aka a massive amnesty)?

Could Senator Dick Durbin - an illegal immigration supporting hack who refered to himself and illegal aliens as "we" as in "we can win" - block immigration "reform" by trying to push for business-unfriendly H-1B related worker protections? From this:

...Durbin is considering the tougher standards for companies that want to bring temporary foreign workers into the country under the H-1B visa program. According to a summary of Durbin's draft proposal, before they could use such visas, companies would have to give a written pledge, or "attestation," that they made a good-faith effort to hire American workers first and that they were not displacing any American workers by bringing in non-U.S. employees... That would mark a substantial change. Today, companies can hire workers on the H-1B program simply by paying the prevailing wage in a certain job. The U.S. Customs & Immigration Service has said that there's an assumption companies will hire Americans first if there's no financial advantage to hiring foreign workers. But there's no requirement that they try to do so (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/8/07, "Work Visas May Work Against the U.S."). A Durbin spokesman said no one in the office, including the Senator, was prepared to comment on details in the proposal because they are not yet finalized...

If he was pushing for this alone, we could give him a modest brownie point or two. But, he's pushing this as part of an amnesty scheme. So, in that case, his grand gesture is like being grateful for someone just savagely kidney-punching America in the back rather than using a knife as they planned to do.

Posted to Immigration2007a at March 27, 2007 10:24 PM