What the immigration reform bill proposed by the senate is really about is the legal right to work in the U.S. for people who do not have that right under current law.
Everything else is just a smoke screen.
This is the hidden issue. In a time of high employment, with five workers for every open position, the last thing the recovery needs will be the addition of millions of workers to compete for the few available jobs.
The one group left out of the immigration discussion is the non-union U.S. worker. What percentage of the U.S. voting population is made up of this group?
Foreigners can get tourist visas to come to the U.S. for a visit every year, indefinitely, if they want, so long as they can show they can financially support themselves without taking a job or using social services reserved for residents. No new laws are needed for that.
Foreign students can already go to college on an F-1 student visa. No new laws are needed for that. In fact, foreign students, due to paying higher out-of-state fees, are often preferred over local students, even at state(tax payer) funded colleges.
However, there are currently few jobs for college grads in the U.S.
The military is overmanned right now. All recruitment targets have been met. The military is now trying to reduce it's force, by kicking out people for the flimsiest reasons.
Immigration Reform May Make Your Job Search Much Tougher
Under the bill, even undergrads foreign students can get green cards allowing them to compete for U.S. jobs directly out of college without having to apply for the H1-B. Ruiz estimates that about 343,000 foreign students currently studying in the U.S. will be eligible to apply for this fast track to citizenship. That’s a huge number, and it includes people who currently don’t even try to apply for an H1-B.
Right now, many foreign students in the U.S. decide to go back to their own countries after graduating because the visa restrictions make it hard to land a job. If a British political science major graduating from a U.S. liberal arts college, for example, wants to work at a nonprofit organization in New York City, she’s unlikely to apply for an H1-B because she has almost no chance of getting one. Other types of visas are even harder to obtain. If the immigration reform bill is passed, the entire U.S. job market is open to any foreign student.
I can't help but wonder if the glee being shown by democrats that the Republicans are caving on the issue is misguided and we are being played for suckers by the Republican oligarchs.
Republicans are under no illusion that they will get any Hispanic voter surge if they support immigration. If they know this, then why would they support it, especially when their base opposes it.
Here's why. Once the job market gets even more skewed to employers and against workers, the economy drops into depression the Democratic party will be seen as the irresponsible party who allowed it to happen.
With the recovery on a thin, fragile path, why Democrats would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is mind boggling.