The San Francisco Chronicle is saying that the new blue card in the European Union will welcome DREAM ACT graduates. However a BBC article states the graduates need 3 years professional experience, which is impossible to obtain if the DREAMERS are in the U.S.
'[U.S.] Technology lobbyists pointed with alarm at the decision this week by the European Union to offer legal status to educated immigrants in information technology and other skilled fields with a new blue card explicitly designed to divert such workers to Europe from the United States.
"The EU is saying, 'We're coming for your students. We know the U.S. produces the best math and science students coming out of college. And we're going to come get them,' " said Robert Hoffman, vice president for government and public affairs at Oracle, the Redwood Shores software giant.'
Otherwise the SFC tells just about the same story as all the other papers on the loss of the DREAM ACT
___
San Francisco Chronicle
October 25, 2007
(10-25) 04:00 PDT Washington- -- The Senate killed help Wednesday for the single most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants - those who were brought to the country as children and now wish to go to college or join the military - and seemed to dash the hopes of Silicon Valley technology companies and California farmers for more immigrant workers they say they desperately need.
The DREAM Act, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children, live here more than five consecutive years and complete two years of college or military service. The bill, which goes by its acronym and is named the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, received a 52-44 majority, but that was far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
The vote split both parties: It was backed by 12 Republicans, but opposed by eight Democrats. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein voted for the bill; Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Democrat, was touring the fire zone in California and missed the vote.
The legislation was the first major attempt since a broad immigration bill crashed in the Senate last June to split off elements that have significant support - without granting legal status to all of the estimated 12 million people living in the country illegally.
The University of California had pushed hard for the bill, with a plea from UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and news conferences with UC students caught in immigration limbo.
Anti-illegal immigration activists mobilized too, deriding the legislation as the nightmare act and stealth amnesty and warning that the measure would trigger a chain migration of sponsored relatives. Supporters vigorously denied those charges.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., went so far as to call for federal agents to round up illegal college students who lobbied for the bill.
Instead of gaining ground, the DREAM Act fractured the unlikely coalition of business and immigrant rights groups that had united earlier this year behind broader immigration overhaul legislation.
Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, conceded that with an election next year and anti-immigrant sentiment increasing, further efforts at immigration reform are probably doomed. That would include the so-called AgJobs bill to provide temporary permits for farmworkers that Feinstein had hoped to push through this year.
It also hampers recent efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to respond to a rising clamor from farms, resorts, high-tech companies, nursing homes and dozens of other industries that say they need workers, and immigrant rights groups who say illegal immigrants are being targeted by federal agents and local and state governments.
The moderate New Democrat Coalition, chaired by Rep. Ellen Tauscher of Walnut Creek, wrote Pelosi on Monday urging action on visas for scientists, mathematicians and engineers, warning that U.S. competitiveness is at stake. But objections arose from other Democrats wanting relief for illegal immigrants.
At the same time, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., one of Pelosi's top political lieutenants, was quoted as saying immigration "has emerged as the third rail of American politics, and anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people."
Technology lobbyists pointed with alarm at the decision this week by the European Union to offer legal status to educated immigrants in information technology and other skilled fields with a new blue card explicitly designed to divert such workers to Europe from the United States.
"The EU is saying, 'We're coming for your students. We know the U.S. produces the best math and science students coming out of college. And we're going to come get them,' " said Robert Hoffman, vice president for government and public affairs at Oracle, the Redwood Shores software giant.
Behind the scenes, business and immigrant rights groups blamed each other for the meltdown - and are refusing to back each other's legislation if they can't attach their own.
Durbin made an impassioned plea for young illegal immigrants who were raised in this country and know no other home yet cannot get permission to work or go to college. He said there is sentiment among Democrats that business groups should not come asking for more workers if they refuse to support such strivers who are already here.
"If we're going to tell these children to leave, that we don't need them, we don't need their talent, we don't need their education, how can you make an argument that we need to bring in more foreign talent to America?" Durbin said.
Technology lobbyists said they have never opposed the DREAM Act and accused Durbin of trying to kill expanded immigration benefits for high skilled legal immigrants at every turn.
"We've always believed we have anywhere from 80 to 90 votes in the U.S. Senate for high skilled immigration," and an equally overwhelming majority in the House, said Ralph Hellman, a top lobbyist with the Information Technology Industry Council. Hellman drew a sharp distinction between expansion of visas for legal immigrants, such as skilled workers on H-1B visas, and illegal immigrants.
"People have always used our issue in legal immigration as sweeteners to get their issue across the finish line. ...We have been a political football for three years on immigration, and we're tired of it," Hellman said. "Given what has happened in the EU, our competitors are going to lap us."
H-1B temporary visas for skilled workers are now running out the first day they are issued, and tech companies say they need them to attract foreign students who have earned math, science and engineering degrees from U.S. universities. Skilled H-1B workers who wish to remain in the United States also face a growing backlog for green cards that grant permanent resident status.
California farmers say the crackdown on the border with Mexico is preventing workers from coming north, and they face the prospect of rotting crops or moving their operations to Mexico.
Doris Meissner, chief of the federal immigration service under President Bill Clinton, who is now at the Migration Policy Institute, said the failure of the DREAM Act "certainly says the piecemeal approach is failing. Whether it means nothing will happen on something like H-1Bs, I don't know. H-1B has a very well organized lobby and it deals with changes in the legal immigration system. The DREAM Act and AgJobs and other things that fall into the realm of being branded amnesty are the ones that really just don't have any legs right now."
E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment