Home > ADVOCACY > Where We Stand > Bipartisan CIR Letter

May 11, 2010


Hon. Charles Schumer
United States Senate
313 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Schumer:

On behalf of the 2,500 employer members of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, I urge you to maintain the bipartisan approach to comprehensive immigration reform similar to that which you took with Senator Graham earlier this spring. The Partnership couldn’t agree more with your recent Washington Post op-ed, in which you said that “the American people deserve more than empty rhetoric.” Given the encouraging and thoughtful language in your initial proposal, we are in strong support of your continued negotiations with both pro-business and pro-labor advocates in an effort to craft a reasonable and fair proposal that can lead to meaningful debate on the subject.
 
While the new Reid-Schumer-Menendez proposal has some of the essential elements of responsible, business-friendly immigration reform, that proposal fails to clearly address the need for a reliable and legal supply of foreign labor that the United States depends on the remain globally competitive.

The Partnership strongly supports the inclusion of “AgJOBS” – a model compromise that reforms the H-2a agricultural guest worker program to accommodate the needs of modern agriculture and relieve the chronic farm labor shortage by permitting undocumented workers to apply and earn legal “Blue Card Status.” This pilot program would allow for the maintenance of an agricultural workforce vital to seasonal business in Buffalo Niagara and across the country during the reform process. Also, the proposed cost-cutting measures to the current H-2a program would reduce its expense significantly by allowing employers to offer housing allowances instead of mandatory free housing, curb transportation reimbursement costs and pay workers a prevailing market-based wage instead of the historically above-market adverse effect wage rate (AEWR).

High-skill visa reform is an issue of utmost importance to our members – particularly in Buffalo Niagara’s target industry sectors, including life sciences and manufacturing – and thus we especially are concerned about the damaging effects of imposing more restrictions on H-1B visa use. While our members support and understand the need to curb H-1B and L-1 visa fraud and abuse, there is great concern that the language in the Reid-Schumer-Menendez proposal seeks to address abuse at the expense of businesses that use the program legitimately to secure much-needed talent. Fraud and abuse protections, if not crafted carefully, can easily render the country’s guest worker programs impossible to use.

Comprehensive immigration reform must focus on matching the visa supply with U.S. labor demands. The proposed “recapture” of unused visas lost to bureaucratic delay is a step in the right direction. Moreover, it is with great forethought that this proposal includes a provision that would make green cards immediately available to foreign students with an advanced degree from a U.S. institution of higher education in a field of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. As the United States falls further behind in graduating workers in high-skill disciplines; there is an immediate need to remove the artificial cap on the number of H-1B visas available each year and let the number available fluctuate according to the needs of the market.

Our members, from life science companies to family farms, need immigration reform to center on reforming the H-2a and H-1B into programs that enable them to attract and retain a skilled workforce. As the Senate begins to consider passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year, I continue to encourage you to maintain a bipartisan, pro-business compromise that balances protection for both the U.S. economy and our country’s guest workers.

Sincerely,

Andrew J. Rudnick

cc.    Congressman Chris Lee
         Congressman Brian Higgins
         Congresswoman Louise Slaughter