The toughest part of enacting a comprehensive immigration overhaul likely will be selling a path to citizenship to the Republican base. But the toughest part of crafting the actual bill has proved to be navigating the competing interests of the business and labor communities.
And late this week in the Senate, efforts to produce the legislation hit yet another sticking point, when the United States Chamber of Commerce and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions, failed to reach an agreement on the future flow of legal immigrants into a low-skilled, year-round, temporary worker visa program.
Though the chamber and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which, for several months now, have been in almost parallel talks to the official negotiations among a bipartisan group of eight senators, had tentatively reached an agreement, the chamber recently pushed Republican members of the Senate group to reopen the sensitive topic of a low-skilled worker program.
At issue is the median hourly wage for low-skilled workers who could be brought in during labor shortages. The business community wants to pay the workers one step below the median hourly wage, while the unions want to pay them one step above.
The labor community, which was already frustrated by what it viewed as the chamber’s tendency to litigate issues in the press, viewed the latest twist as akin to an episode of “Peanuts,†with Lucy once again moving the football as Charlie Brown tries to kick it.
“Working people don’t believe it meets the laugh test for corporate interests to attempt to hijack the moral and political urgency of citizenship for more than 11 million people in order to lower wages for local immigrant and non-immigrant workers,†said Jeff Hauser, a spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “This immigration reform effort is about preventing deportations from ripping apart families, not lowering the median wages of low-wage workers struggling to get above the poverty level.â€
The chamber, meanwhile, rejected the characterization.
“It is simply untrue that the business community is seeking to pay foreign workers anything other than what American workers receive,†said Randel K. Johnson, the senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the chamber. “First, any immigrant worker who would come in under this program has the same protections as American workers and therefore it would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act to pay less than the minimum wage. Second, any temporary worker program would require that an immigrant worker be paid the greater of actual wages being paid to comparable American workers or the prevailing wages.â€
Last month, the chamber and the A.F.L.-C. I. O reached an agreement, at least in principle, recognizing the need for a visa program that would allow businesses to meet their demand for low-skilled labor, while also protecting American workers.
But the groups remained divided over the maximum number of visas the low-skilled worker program should offer, with the chamber asking for 400,000 visas, and labor preferring a much lower number. Now, the two groups seem have reached a tentative agreement on the size and scope of the program â€" up to 200,000 new visas annually for the low-skilled temporary worker program.
On Thursday afternoon, the bipartisan group of eight senators convened a second set of meetings that day. As the four Republicans headed over to the Capitol, they seemed encouraged, if not quite optimistic.
“Wait for the white smoke,†joked Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a member of the group, invoking the method used to signal agreement on a new pope.
But by early evening, the negotiations had deteriorated over concerns about the labor and business disagreements surrounding the low-skilled worker program. The group took a short break, with plans to reconvene later that evening. Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and a member of the group, said that the business-labor portion of the legislation was proving by far the thorniest.
On Friday morning, however, the Senate group headed back to the bargaining table, where aides close to the negotiations said significant progress was made. Now, with just hours until Congress embarks on a two-week break, the bipartisan group is taking its latest compromise, and shopping it back to the business and labor communities.
