Immigration Reform Could Be a Longtime Coming

The word from on high as passed down to us little folk at the political action committee meeting Wednesday night is that immigration reform is coming our way fast and furious and it should happen quickly. The messenger, a woman who is plugged in at the state labor council, then added sardonically, "But that's what they said about the healthcare law."

Apropo of this is Steven Greenhouse's story this morning about the AFL-CIO working with the Chamber of Commerce on an immigration overhaul. A sticking point is the guest-worker program; the same sticking point that scuttled Bush's attempt at an immigration overhaul in 2007.

Labor is pushing for a body of experts to determine, based on certain data, how many provisional visas to issue at any one time. Business is fighting back saying that such a system wouldn't work; it would create another unwieldy government bureaucracy unresponsive to employer needs.

Labor unions have urged business to embrace a plan pushed by Ray Marshall, labor secretary under President Jimmy Carter. He suggests creating a commission of experts who would use economic data to determine, for instance, whether 20,000 or 40,000 immigrants should be granted provisional visas to do seasonal work nationwide at shellfish plants, restaurants or apple orchards.

“Instead of a system that works at the whim of any employer, it will be a data-driven system,” said Richard Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Under the current system, he noted, employers have applied repeatedly for new batches of guest workers. A data-driven system would ensure an adequate flow of immigrants to help employers meet seasonal needs, he said.

Mr. McBurney of the hotel association disagreed. “It will never work,” he said. “There are no experts who will know exactly what the economy will need — this was proved by command and control economies. The bureaucracy will never be able to respond to the economy. The economy is a very dynamic thing. Bureaucracies aren’t so dynamic.”

Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, agreed. “We oppose the commission because it would never be able to determine shortages in a timely manner that reflect the always-changing realities of the marketplace.”

One way unions have moved closer to the Chamber is that many have embraced the E-Verify system to screen new hires:

In another important step forward, many labor unions have joined with the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups in embracing E-Verify, a federal electronic system that uses Social Security numbers and other data to verify that newly hired workers are in the country legally. Union leaders have frequently denounced E-Verify as error-prone, a continuing concern. They said it often declared that immigrants with valid papers were not authorized to work.

When I worked at the carpenters local we often went to bat for guys who got tagged by E-Verify; a service representative would walk them through getting a temporary Social Security Card and then fight the employer to accept that as a valid form of identification.

Based on a reading of Greenhouse's story the woman from the state labor council might be right. It could be a new immigration law will be a longtime coming.