The US Senate has passed the landmark immigration reform Bill that provides a 13-year pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants, including some 250,000 Indians, and expands the H-1B work visa scheme for skilled professionals.
But there is a big question mark on whether the House of Representatives will even take up the Senate package with some top Republican lawmakers terming the Bill “dead on arrival in the House”. Instead, the House plans to take up a set of smaller Bills, the scope of which is far from clear as of now.
From an Indian standpoint, the Bill, as passed by the Senate, is loaded heavily against Indian IT firms with major US operations over the past decade and a half. Several new conditions have been incorporated in the H-1B visa scheme that target Indian and other foreign IT firms operating in the US.
The Senate package, however, has good news for Indian software engineers as also Indian students graduating from American universities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses with master’s and higher degrees. Even if the likes of TCS, Infosys and Wipro find the going tough, American tech giants will still be tapping Indian engineers in a big way. And the STEM graduates recruited within American can additionally expect faster green cards for permanent residence.
All this will seem an academic discussion for the moment since there is no knowing which way the Republican-controlled House of Representatives intends to proceed on different facets of the immigration overhaul and how many months it would take.
Called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernisation Act (S. 744), the Senate passed the comprehensive legislation with a comfortable majority of 68-32, with 14 of the Senate's 46 Republicans joining the 52 Democrats and two Independents in support of the bill. That came about largely because the Bill was authored by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” Senators, with four each from the Democratic and Republican parties.
The packed visitors’ gallery, composed predominantly of undocumented latino immigrants, erupted in celebration as the vote went through, with many chanting the famous Obama line, “Yes, we can!”
President Barack Obama himself, away on an African visit, was quick to applaud the Senate’s strong bipartisan vote. “Today, the Senate did its job. It’s now up to the House to do the same,” he said in a statement, asserting that America was one critical step closer to fixing its broken immigration system once and for all.
Having signalled that immigration overhaul would be the signature initiative of his second term in office, just as healthcare reform was in the first, Obama said this legislation, if enacted, would finally offer ‘a pathway to earned citizenship’ for 11 million illegal immigrants who pass background checks, learn English, pay taxes and a penalty, and then go to the back of the line behind others who have played by the rules and tried to come to America legally.
This initiative would also provide a big boost to America's recovery by shrinking the deficits and growing the economy, said Obama.
But House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner, let it be known that they have other ideas on immigration reform. For starters, Boehner said the Republicans would “do our own Bill” and one that “reflects the will of our majority”.
A large number of Republicans, notably hardcore conservatives, are stoutly opposed to the idea of conferring citizenship upon immigrants who have been living illegally in the US for years, terming it an ‘amnesty’. They insist that intensified border security to stop further waves of illegal immigrants should be the first step in any immigration reform.
Democrats argue that the border security issue has been addressed adequately, with a compromise amendment piloted by two Republican Senators that earmarks $46 billion for new measures, including 20,000 new border patrol agents and completion of 700 miles of fencing and deployment of high-tech devices along the US-Mexico border.
The House Republicans, however, are known to be supportive an expansion of the H-1B visa scheme. The Senate bill raises the number of these visas from the current 65,000 per year to 115,000, rising to a maximum of 180,000 in case of a big spurt in demand.
The US tech industry lobbied hard for the H-1B expansion and for tapping foreign STEM graduates from US universities on the grounds that homegrown talent in this key area is insufficient. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had launched a political action group to press for action. Top executives of several American tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Cisco were quick to laud the Senate vote.