News Update - June 28, 2007
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
S. 1639 Falls - What's Next?
In Senate voting this morning, the bid to invoke cloture to limit
debate on the remaining amendments to the comprehensive immigration
reform legislation, S. 1639, failed by a vote of 46-53, and the
bill was withdrawn. Further words will undoubtedly be spoken by
leaders of both political parties, and a great amount of finger-pointing
and blame will be done. However, unless this bill soon again miraculously
arises from the dead like Lazarus, comprehensive immigration reform
will be tremendously difficult to revive until after the elections
in 2008.
If quick resuscitation efforts fail, massive efforts should be
made towards convincing legislators to take largely non-controversial
parts of the legislation, e.g.-AgJobs and the DREAM Act, and pass
them separately. In addition, business organizations and others
should press Congress anew to expand the H-1B cap quota, which turned
out to be such a fiasco this year when the entire quota was consumed
on the first day.
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