As the US Senate gets ready to handle the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR)bill, new and familiar divisions that have thus far hindered its progress, have begun to raise their ugly heads. If you try and analyze the reasons for the delay in passing reform legislation, it becomes apparent not only why it has failed in the past but also why it may not pass this year again.

Well the obvious reason certainly is powerful vested interests. Most significantly, most of these interests seem to be happy with the status quo. Lets look at the powerful business lobby. The status quo ensures that they continue to get cheap labor - in a lot of cases at below minimum wage. Whats the guaranty that the passage of the bill will not force them to pay labor at prevailing wage and also to take care of  healthcare and benefits. In all probability, paying legal wage will mean higher labor costs than their costs with illegal labor today. Certainly not a very welcome scenario for business.

Now consider the illegal immigrants. With illegal status , other than the odd raid on an odd meat-packing plant, there certainly is not any huge risk of getting deported back to their country of origin. They have always had access to free healthcare, thanks to the ER's around the country. Their kids in almost all cases are American citizens, by virtue of having been born here - so they enjoy all the rights and benefits of being Americans. Hell, now they can also use their home country ID's to get credit cards, bank accounts, homes and cars and lead comfortable lives like legal American residents. Immigration reform has the potential of upsetting the apple cart by making them do things like take a trip back home in order to "get in line". Well, thats not very nice.

Now take the case of American Immigration Lawyers and their stance vis-a-vis one of the existing skilled guest worker programs - the H1B program. All along their stance has been to support the increase in the number of H1B visas given out every year. Each one of these visa holders becomes their clients even before they land in the country. In most cases, these H1B holders pursue the Green card dream and continue to be their lawyers clients. The longer it takes for these Green cards to be processed, the better it is for the lawyers as they generate more fees from all the paper processing - extensions, numerous applications etc - that the American legal system requires one to perform. Not surprisingly, immigration lawyer lobbies have offered only lip service in proposing reform of employment based immigration while being very vociferous about the need to increase the H1B visa limit every year. Because doing so allows them to increase the size of the market and keeps it captive for a long period of time given the long backlogs in employment based visa processing. Changing the status quo by reducing the green card backlog for employment based immigration could prove to be very bad for business.

The conservatives have opposed CIR all along. The reason being it rewards illegal behavior. They are sadly mistaken if they believe they are doing the opposite of what the groups and interest that seemingly support CIR want. By opposing CIR, they may be playing into their very hands. Hmmmm, is that not food for thought???