Why Business is Running Scared
The fractious politics of immigration have put industry groups on the defensive
The way Doug Torn sees the immigration debate is pretty simple. Torn, the owner of a 30-employee nursery outside Greensboro, N.C., says Congress must pass reform legislation now. Half of Torn's employees are foreign-born Hispanic or Vietnamese and on temporary agriculture visas, a "cumbersome" system. But what's more important, he says, is to "bring people out of the shadows" and allow them to work legally. He's doing his part to make that happen, traveling recently to Capitol Hill to lobby the state delegation along with 20 sod producers, landscapers, and others from back home.
The reception, though, was quite chilly. "They say 'people call in'" against the legislation, but for Torn the math is pretty simple: If one constituent calls in, that's one person; if one business owner calls in, he is representing all of his employees, too. "Industry should carry more weight," he says, "but I think, in truth, they don't. The business community has not been that vocal."
Perhaps no one has a bigger stake in reforming the nation's immigration laws than American businesses. Industries from agriculture to construction to high tech all depend heavily on immigrant labor, legal or illegal. Yes, their representatives are walking the halls of Capitol Hill to win votes, but immigration is a vexing issue. It dominates talk radio and cable TV—cue Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs—and has splintered the Republican Party. The result: Big business, unaccustomed to losing in Washington, finds itself playing defense, accused of supporting "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. How well business parries those attacks and makes its case in coming weeks will go a long way toward determining if any new immigration policies are written before the next president takes office in 2009.
Bargain. The current immigration debate is the result of months of back room negotiations between the White House and a handful of senators of both parties. The "grand bargain" legislation that emerged has plenty of critics; several amendments threatened to kill the compromise just last week. For business, the legislation would help provide a reliable stream of workers.
The Labor Department estimates that at least half of the 1.8 million American crop workers are undocumented immigrants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington think tank, foreign-born Hispanics make up 20 percent of the construction industry's workforce. Among other provisions, the legislation would tighten border security, increase the number of visas for high-tech skilled workers, grant most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country legal status, and create a guest-worker program that would require immigrants to return home eventually.
The business community has organized around a few umbrella groups, but there is no one really in charge—and that may be part of the problem. "You have coalitions of coalitions," says Ralph Hellmann, a lobbyist at the Information Technology Industry Council. The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition focuses on policy for skilled and unskilled labor. The Compete America coalition includes high-tech companies like Google and Microsoft. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has played a leadership role on immigration legislation for years. All the groups say they're committed to enacting a reform bill, but they all have problems with parts—different parts, in some cases-of the current compromise legislation. High-tech groups, for instance, are focused on getting more visas for high-skilled immigrants like computer programmers.
advertisement
