By: Carrie Budoff Brown and Seung Min Kim May 21, 2013 11:56 AM EDT |
Leahy’s announcement followed an emotional debate in the committee.
Including the amendment — a top priority of the gay-rights community — threatened to derail the entire legislation, as top Republican negotiators such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said they will not support the Gang compromise if the amendment were included.
“As much as it pains me, I cannot support this amendment if it will bring down the bill,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called the decision one of the most “excruciatingly difficult” he has made in public office.
Earlier Tuesday, senators rushed to finish a major rewrite in U.S. immigration laws, securing key Republican support for the Gang of Eight bill as it moved closer to a debate on the Senate floor.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced he would vote to move the immigration bill out of the Judiciary Committee after winning concessions on high-skilled worker visas critical to the tech industry.
And Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave the bill a boost by saying he wouldn’t block the measure from a debate on the Senate floor next month, despite demands from tea party groups to throw up procedural roadblocks.
Those developments came as the committee on Tuesday defeated multiple attempts to alter the pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The day’s markup proceeded much like the previous four sessions, meaning the Democratic-led panel easily turned back amendments that would have significantly changed the Gang of Eight compromise.
The high-tech visa agreement was one of the last remaining pieces of unfinished business and was added to the underlying bill by a voice vote Tuesday afternoon. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spent days working with Hatch, hoping that a deal could persuade the Utah senator to back the bill and boost the bipartisan momentum behind the issue.
“Many things that are there I like, some things I don’t like,” Schumer said of his deal with Hatch. “That’s how compromise is, especially when you’re trying to move a bill as complicated as this.”
Hatch told reporters that if his amendments on high-skilled visas passed, “I will vote to report the bill out of committee.” He warned, however, that he will need to win approval of other amendments involving tax and benefit provisions before he would support the bill on the floor.
By wooing Hatch, Schumer risked alienating Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a Gang of Eight member who has opposed the Utah Republican’s amendments. Durbin has been a steadfast ally of labor unions, which have not endorsed the agreement, but Durbin backed the deal, billing it as a “reasonable compromise.”
“We have worked on this with [Hatch] in the spirit of compromise,” Durbin told reporters. “In hope that he will ultimately vote for the bill, we are going to try to support this compromise approach.”
Labor unions aren’t on board with the package, although their objections don’t appear significant enough to pull support for the overall bill.
“Whatever deal has been struck, AFL-CIO has not signed off,” Ana Avendano, assistant to the president and director of Immigration and Community Action at the AFL-CIO, said in an interview Tuesday morning.
The agreement between Schumer and Hatch includes such changes as adding Hatch’s market-based formula for determining the annual increases in the number of H-1B visas, but adding provisions that say the increase won’t happen if the jobless rate in those specific fields is above a certain threshold.
Hatch also wanted to remove language in the Senate Gang of Eight bill that required companies to attest that they would not displace current workers in certain circumstances. The agreement heeds that demand, but also adds a requirement aimed at protecting U.S. workers at companies that often employ specialized foreign workers.
Negotiators added several provisions in a bid to appeal to labor unions — such as mandating government reports every year on high-skilled visa programs and easing portability for employees on H-1B visas. But those changes were not enough to satisfy major unions.
The bill could emerge from the committee with three Republican senators’ votes: Hatch, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Graham and Flake are members of the Gang of Eight, which drafted the bill.
“We need his help to report the bill from the committee and ultimately to pass it on the floor,” Durbin said of Hatch. “I would be disappointed if at the end of the day, after all the effort and all the compromise that we put into this, if Sen. Hatch didn’t support the bill.”
The landmark Gang of Eight legislation is all but certain to pass the Judiciary Committee, but its prospects on the Senate floor — where the bill is expected in June — are less clear. But at least procedurally, the legislation got a boost Tuesday from McConnell, when he told reporters that he wants to ensure the bill proceeds to the floor.
“With regard to getting started on the bill — it’s my intention, if there is a motion to proceed required, to vote for the motion to proceed so we can get on the bill and see if it we’re able to pass a bill that actually moves the ball in the right direction,” McConnell said.
The Senate’s top Republican, who will have considerable influence in the broader floor debate, also praised the Gang of Eight for making a “substantial contribution” to moving immigration reform along.
The Judiciary panel spent the day defending the bill’s 13-year path to citizenship, rejecting GOP amendments to rein in the program.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed allowing undocumented immigrants to become legal permanent residents but not citizens. He said the bill is unfair to millions of legal immigrants who have followed rules and that it would only encourage more illegal immigration.
“In my view, if this committee rejects this amendment … that decision will make it much much more likely that this entire bill will fail in the House of Representatives,” Cruz said. “I don’t want immigration reform to fail. I want it to pass.”
Graham, Flake and Hatch joined with the Democratic committee members to defeat the Cruz amendment.
Cruz’s attempt to ban undocumented immigrants from receiving means-tested government benefits also failed, 6-12.
Tarini Parti contributed to this report.
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