The following is collected and archived by CND-US. If you have any questions regarding the following information/message, please contact the original sender(s) listed below. Thank You. China News Digest - US Regional Services (Bo Xiong) --------------- From: jzhang3@woodlawn.uchicago.edu (Jiawei Zhang) Subject: if you are concerned about Simpson bill X-Nntp-Posting-Host: midway.uchicago.edu Message-ID: Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Reply-To: jzhang3@midway.uchicago.edu Organization: University of Chicago -- Academic Computing Services Distribution: il Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 22:50:09 GMT Wall Street Journel, Thursday, March 7, 1996 Simpson to Remove From Bill Provisions That Would Curb Job-Related Immigration By JOE DAVIDSON Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON -- In a major victory for business leaders, Sen. Alan Simpson has decided to strike employment-related immigration provisions from his sweeping immigration legislation. Sen. Simpson said he will inform colleagues at Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee meeting that he is dropping portions of the bill that would, among other things, cut to 90,000 from 140,000 the immigration slots set aside for foreigners with jobs in the U.S. Another provision would have required employers to pay a fee for certain foreigners hired to a fund for training American workers. The decision by the veteran Wyoming Republican to drop the employment provisions may allow him to avoid an almost certain defeat engineered by freshman Sen. Spencer Abraham (R., Mich.), who is aligned with advocates of liberal immigration based on employment and family ties. Sen. Abraham has sought to split the bill into separate provisions dealing with legal and illegal immigration. By dropping the employment provisions, Sen. Simpson tried to head off the move by Sen. Abraham to split the bill. ''I want to keep the bill together until we're finished'' with the committee amendment process, Mr. Simpson said. Pro-immigration lobbyists said Sen. Abraham had 10 votes, out of 18 on the committee, to dismantle Mr. Simpson's bill. Because there isn't widespread support for a measure deeply cutting legal immigration, splitting the bill could well have doomed Mr. Simpson's effort to reduce the total number of legal immigrants -- immigrants that are both family- and employment-sponsored -- allowed into the country. Attorney General Janet Reno and Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner Doris Meissner called senators urging them to vote to divide the legislation. Business groups have mounted strong lobbying efforts against any move to cut employment-based legal immigration. Sen. Simpson's decision to strip the bill of its employment-related provisions may satisfy some business groups. ''From our point of view, if there were no employment-related provisions in the bill, we would have no reason to be up there lobbying,'' said Jennifer Eisen, director of American Business for Legal Immigration. Said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America: ''If Sen. Simpson drops the business-immigration provisions from the bill, that would be a major step forward for the information-technology community.'' The Simpson bill would reduce overall legal immigration significantly. The bill also would battle illegal immigration through a series of measures, including an increase in the number of Border Patrol agents and other INS officers. In addition, the bill would create a system requiring employers to verify that people they hired were legally allowed to work. High-tech industry leaders have been in the forefront of the business community's fight to retain the 140,000 business-related immigration slots, even though only 93,000 were used last year. They argue that reducing the number of slots could impair their industry's ability to continue growing at its current rapid rate. ''The people who we are bringing in are not displacing Americans and preventing Americans from filling jobs,'' argued Phillip Wilson, senior vice president of Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif. The immigrants fill vacancies for high-skilled positions, helping companies grow and create jobs, he said. ''If our ability to recruit these people and place them in jobs is reduced ... we will have to go to where these people are to get the job done.'' Sen. Simpson's dropping of the business-related provisions was welcomed by those who oppose his efforts to also cut family-related immigration. ''It's a sign that Sen. Simpson can't get his legal-immigration cuts through the Judiciary Committee,'' said Frank Scharry, of the National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum. ''The way we look at it is, one shoe has dropped and it's only a matter of time before the other shoe drops, i.e. family and refugee cuts.''