Pilipino Worker's Center

Federal Policy Update

Prepared by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA)

February 28, - Rep. Sam Johnson introduces a bill that is considered an alternative to the SAVE Act. NEVA is endorsed by the Society for Human Resource Initiative and will include sub-contracting the employee verification work to contractors. It will still use the SSA database and is more intended to protect employers.

March 5, - Republicans meet on a package of enforcement only focused bills. In the House of Representatives, Republican sponsors of the SAVE Act have begun to circulate a discharge petition in an effort to gather enough signatures to force a vote on the SAVE Act on the House Floor. Only a simple majority is required to trigger the discharge petition. At least a handful of Democrats are likely to sign the petition.

March 6, - Democrats meet to discuss final package of a comprehensive bill which Joe Baca says will get bipartisan support. This includes addressing the cap on H2B visas, 5 year work visas and 3 and ten years bars as well as visas for family members of people in the military. SEIU has registered that they might not support a package that does not include expanded labor protections.

March 11, - Republicans file a discharge petition- Rep. Thelma Drake

The idea behind this Republican package is to further polarize the Democratic party on the issue and to put pressure on the Presidential candidates to take a tougher stance on immigration. Caught in the middle is the CHC which is torn between taking a tough stand for immigration reform and calibrating its demands so that some legislation could at least move.

On the Senate side, the Democrats are thinking of drafting a set of principles on comprehensive immigration reform using polling data that came out of CCIR but using a stronger language such as “requiring legalization or face deportation” in order to look as though they have a degree of toughness on immigration. Senator Ted Kennedy will review this proposal.

This week, the Republicans will try to gather more votes for the SAVE Act, hoping that they have a stronger proposal to present after the March 14 spring recess. That is why CHIRLA sent out the action alert last Friday so that our partners could have more time to petition their lawmakers on the issue.

In a related development, the Utah and Mississippi legislatures have both passed Comprehensive Immigration bills, including among others, requiring employers to use the E-Verify System comprehensively and authorize local police to implement, if not cooperate in implementing federal immigration law.

In the Senate, a coalition of Republican Senators is planning to introduce a series of anti-immigrant bills to try to raise the temperature on immigration in the Senate. The list of bills follows, but it’s not complete.

• S. 2710 - sponsored by Senator Sessions, authorizes Homeland Security to use an employer’s failure to resolve a “no match” notice as evidence that the employer knowingly hired an illegal alien in violation of federal law (INA 274A(a);