Senate Stalls Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

Despite the messages in the national media that there’s no hope the Senate will pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill this summer, green industry groups are hopeful the measure still has a chance.

The murky outlook is a result of yesterday’s activity in the Senate, where leaders failed to gain enough votes to limit debate and speed S.1348 to final passage. Only 45 senators voted for this procedural maneuver – 15 short of what was needed – prompting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pull the bill from the floor and move on to other business.

This action is a setback due to several provisions seen as favorable by the landscape industry, including reform of the H-2B seasonal worker program that would address the restrictive cap, in addition to a legalization mechanism for currently undocumented workers. 

Reid has insisted the bill is not dead, but its future is uncertain due to a busy Senate calendar. “I, even though disappointed, look forward to passing this bill,” Reid said, according to the Associated Press. “I have every desire to complete this legislation, and we all have to work – the president included – to figure out a way to get this bill passed.”

Critics say a busy Senate calendar and partisanship may not allow for this to happen before the election season.

It’s possible the Senate may resume debate on the bill, says Bob Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association, although a timeframe is difficult to predict. “It could be a week; it could be a couple weeks,” he said.

In the mean time, the industry should continue putting its full support behind comprehensive measures, Dolibois said. “We may eventually get to the point where comprehensive is categorically dead and we need to move forward particularly with the H-2B exemption for returning workers expiring – we do need to do something about that – but the reality is as long as comprehensive has even a faint heartbeat, it’s still in our best interest as an industry overall to continue to push for comprehensive,” Dolibois said.

One of the major factors indicating the likelihood the Senate will re-debate the bill is President Bush’s level of energy and willingness to challenge the bill’s republican opposition in the Senate, Dolibois said. “If he’s not going to use what’s known as the bully pulpit, then this bill is going to languish in partisanship.”

If Congress fails to act, ANLA expects labor woes to worsen, immigration raids and enforcement to step up and a rush by states and municipalities to take the immigration issue into their own hands.

The call to action for industry members, Dolibois said, is to contact Senators expressing disappointment that S.1348 has been shelved in addition to restating the industry’s interests in securing changes in the law that will assure a reliable workforce moving forward.