Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Immigration Law Blogs -> US Immigration Matters

Immigration Law

: US Immigration Matters

Hold off on Immigration Reform

By Annie Banerjee

The one party Health Care bill was signed into law today. Although I applaud Mr. Obama's attempt to work in a bipartisan manner, he should have slowed down the process to concede to the republican demands. He refused to compromise with the republicans, courted the democrats and rammed a bill down the throats of an unwilling population. That is NOT democracy. What will happen to that health care bill is that Republicans will file a court challenge to it. The conservative Supreme Court will declare it unconstitutional. In the meantime, in October the make up of the Senate and House will change. And the health care issue will die.

Our Separation of Powers works if the legislative majority and the Executive are not of the same party. With a single party holding swing over the Executive and Legislature the checks and balances are gone.

Yet probably unlike health care, Immigration can be bipartisan. There were at least two bills jointly put forward by a Republican and a Democrat. And former president Bush wanted immigration reform as much as President Obama does. Yet the parameters are different for different parties. The democrats want to legalize the undocumented aliens who are illegally here. They do mainly manual jobs, work hard, and are necessary for the country. However the democrats frown upon the intellectual jobs being done by mostly Indian and Chinese professionals, who are here legally on H-1B visas, giving into protectionist labor organizations.The H-1B visas have been attached ever since Mr. Obama took office. First there were the workplace raids, whose main purpose was to see if businesses were following the letter of the law minutely. Then came the January 08 memo, which virtually ended consulting companies (mainly IT companies) ability to hire foreign nationals on H-1B. These people are legal, have valid visas and work in professional jobs. They too are necessary for the American economy. American colleges do not generate a high volume of Computer Professionals necessary to keep American businesses going. The Republicans support these work visas, the democrats don't.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform has to be COMPREHENSIVE. Just as health care bill did not include provisions to curb tort lawyers, an Immigration bill which only addresses the illegal immigrants supplying manual labor and not the legal immigrants supplying intellectual labor is simply unacceptable.

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee

Full post as published by US Immigration Matters on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).