I work in a state legislative office - and we know all the juicy details (usually more than we’d like) and I can only imagine the MUCH LARGER staffs of Senators/Congressmen would have specialists - I know mine does.

Yes, yes, the blog was about how the media uses a game frame instead of substantive reporting. But still…people should know that this information is not unavailable. It just takes a little more effort than a google search and a perusal of the morning paper.

You are right. I have just just a little quibble — although the tech boom was a big factor in economic growth in the late 1990s, it was far from the whole ball game. Parts of the economy other than the technology industry enjoyed real growth in that period also.

In particular, the provisions INCREASING the number of H-1B visas were HORRIBLE. We citizens of the US need jobs too. The H-1B visa program increases the number of foreign passes for high-tech jobs. These jobs were, until 1995, exclusively done by Americans. We wrote the code which runs the web. While an occasional program was written by non-US, 80-90 % were US.

So, what happened in 1995 or thereabouts? Y2K and the tech boom. These drove the need for IT workers higher and higher, until the Gov’mnt decided that a temporary increase in foreign visas was needed.

That boom is over. Today, we are in a bust cycle, and yet the IT firms continue to crusade for more and more IT workers. Why? To decrease labor costs, and that’s the only reason.

So what?

There are laws, and if you deliberately and flagrently violate them, there are consequences. That’s how it should be.

I find myself to a large degree in the same camp as conservatives on the issue of illegal immigration. Nobody MADE anyone sneak across the border, any more than Paris was required to drive drunk. No one MADE illegals purchase black-market SSN for employment & ID purposes as many have. That can result in screwing up the credit & Social Security for the victims of ID theft. NO one wants to talk about the economic impact of flooding the labor market with cheap labor. Legal or illegal, too many workers drives down wages, which is why the Chamber of Commerce and Big Business has been the prime backer of looking the other way in illeglas for decades, including Clintons term.

There should be consequences for people who are in this country illegally. Those consequences will in some cases, affect children who ARE citizens. Of couse, if I commit a crime and go to jail (insted of being deported), that has consequences for my daughter and wife, who are legal. No one would suggest as a defense that I should go free because my daughter is blonde and cute, or that Paris should go free because she is sexy and rich, so why is there such an outcry of sympathy for criminals who entered the country illegally or overstayed a legal visa.

BTW, my wife is not a US citizen, she is legal and it was not easy for her to get here. Disagree if you wish, but don’t suggest I am racist or red-neck.

In my job I’ve been doing a lot of advocacy work on the bill and it’s hard to know even from hour to hour what’s in it, with all the ammendments flying back and forth, which might be part of the problem in the news reporting, but I agree, it seems like they haven’t even tried. Here’s a short description of the key points:

-would create “Z-visa” program as path to legalization for immigrants who have been here since May, 2005. But, they would have to return to their own country of origin and apply at the US Consulate before becoming fully naturalized
-created “guest worker” program where workers could work for two years, then would have to return to their country of origin for one year. they could renew guest worker status twice, for total of 6 years, always with the one year gap between times working in the US
-a very controversial mandatory electronic employment eligibility verfication system which raises signifcant privacy concerns (http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/25927prs20060619.html)
-increased security along the border through a combination of a fence and electronic surveillance methods and UAVs

This is just a very short summary of the basic text of the bill. There are many, many ammendments. And yes, in large part the Republicans had put in enough ammendments to slow down the process and make the bill unpalatable to several immigration groups. NILC I believe did not support the version that was put out yesterday, and other immigrant groups did not support cloture yesterday, or did so only in the hope that they could significantly alter the bill in conference.