After Aiding Bill on Immigration, Employers Balk

WASHINGTON (By Robert Pear, NYTimes) May 21, 2007 — Employers, who helped shape a major immigration bill over the last three months, said on Sunday that they were unhappy with the result because it would not cure the severe labor shortages they foresee in the coming decade.

In addition, employers expressed alarm as they learned that the Senate bill would require them to check a government database to verify that all current and former employees — aliens and citizens alike — were eligible to work in the United States.

The Senate begins debating the bill on Monday. Supporters, including the White House, had hoped that senators would finish work on it this week, before the Memorial Day recess. But leading members of Congress said Sunday that the bill would take more time and could face significant hurdles.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said that the immigration bill “can’t possibly be completed before Memorial Day.” On the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. McConnell said the Senate would need at least two weeks to digest and amend the bill, which he described as “a big, complicated piece of legislation.”

A delay over Memorial Day would give the public an opportunity to weigh the issue, while lawmakers are home, and would give critics more time to hone their arguments.

The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, expressed concern on Sunday about a central element of the bill, under which the government would establish a point system to evaluate would-be immigrants, giving more weight to job skills and education and less to family ties.

“I have serious objection to the point system that is in the bill now, but perhaps that can be improved,” said Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat. She asserted that this part of the bill, ardently sought by the White House and Republican senators, could undermine “family unification principles which have been fundamental to American immigration.”

Besides revamping visa preferences, the bill would also offer legal status to most of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants and would increase the penalties for businesses that employ them.

In the last few years, employers have become a potent force in the debate on immigration, pleading with Congress to authorize more visas for both high- and low-skill workers.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a bill co-author, said the point system was devised so America “can compete for the best minds that exist in the world.”

Robert P. Hoffman, a vice president of Oracle, the business software company, endorsed that goal but said the bill would not achieve it.

“A merit-based system for allocating green cards may sound good for business,” said Mr. Hoffman, who is co-chairman of Compete America, a coalition of high-tech companies. “But after reviewing the proposal, we have concluded that it is the wrong approach and will not solve the talent crisis facing many U.S. businesses. In fact, in some ways, it could leave American employers in a worse position.

“Under the current system,” Mr. Hoffman said, “you need an employer to sponsor you for a green card. Under the point system, you would not need an employer as a sponsor. An individual would get points for special skills, but those skills may not match the demand. You can’t hire a chemical engineer to do the work of a software engineer.”

David Isaacs, director of federal affairs at the Hewlett-Packard Company, said in a letter to the Senate that “a ‘merit-based system’ would take the hiring decision out of our hands and place it squarely in the hands of the federal government.”

Employers of lower-skilled workers voiced another concern.

“The point system would be skewed in favor of more highly skilled and educated workers,” said Laura Foote Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, whose members employ millions of workers in hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and the construction industry.

Denyse Sabagh, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said, “This bill does not give employers what they need, and some are pretty upset about it.”

Under a 2086 law, employers are supposed to ask job applicants for verification that they are eligible to work in the United States. The Senate bill would require employers to check an electronic database established by the government.

“We cannot ask our employers to verify somebody here unless we help them,” President Bush said last week.

But Susan R. Meisinger, president of the Society for Human Resource Management, which represents 215,000 executives, said: “The Senate proposal would require employers to reverify the identity and employment eligibility of 145 million Americans who are currently employed. That’s unworkable. The burden on government and the private sector could cause the system to crash.”

The government has been testing an employee verification system like the one envisioned in the Senate bill. Federal investigators have found a significant error rate because information in the database is sometimes inaccurate or outdated.

Business executives have been working closely with Hispanic groups, like the National Council of La Raza, in seeking a comprehensive immigration bill. These alliances were on display last week at a dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.

Sponsors of the dinner included Wal-Mart, the Service Employees International Union, the United States Chamber of Commerce, Marriott, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Restaurant Association, which says that restaurants are the “No. 1 employer of immigrants.”

Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, explained the reason for employers’ keen interest in the issue: “We do not have enough workers to support a growing economy. We have members who pay good wages but face worker shortages every day.”

Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, said that immigration was essential to economic growth because “without it, we will have significant labor shortages in key occupations.”

Mr. Hoffman, the Oracle software executive, said “we have hundreds of unfilled jobs” for which American citizens cannot be found. Mr. Hoffman said the company had identified people from India, China and other countries who were receiving advanced degrees from American universities and would make excellent software engineers, but Oracle could not arrange visas for them.