HELP!! Dem stand on immigration, would someone please tell me what's

For Gates, A Visa Charge
Sunday, March 19, 2006; Page B07

When the Senate comes back to work next week, it is scheduled to take up the issue of immigration. And that is what brought Bill Gates to Washington for a rare visit last week.

The Microsoft billionaire does not love this capital, but he decided to add his personal voice to his Washington office's lobbying effort to expand the number of foreign-born computer scientists allowed to work in this country under a special program known as H-1B visas.

In an interview sandwiched between his meetings on Capitol Hill, Gates told me the "high-skills immigration issue is by far the number one thing" on the Washington agenda for Microsoft and for the electronics industry generally. "This is gigantic for us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031701798.html

DOBBS: Senator Byron Dorgan is one of the few Democrats who oppose a guest worker program and immigration reform legislation before the Senate. The senator says it's a sellout to corporations that want cheap labor. He has written an amendment to block any guest worker program at all. Senator Dorgan joins us tonight from Capitol Hill.

Senator, thanks for being here. I think most of us were taken by that spectacle of watching the Republican leadership, the Democratic leadership, before cameras today hailing this breakthrough. You're unimpressed?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: Well, I'm not impressed. I mean, look, this is the corporate strategy in this country now and Congress seems to be embracing it. The corporate strategy is export good American jobs and then import cheap labor. That might be good corporate strategy, but in my judgment, it's not good for the American worker.

There's all this discussion about immigration and immigrants. There's very little discussion about the American worker. In my judgment, they also have a very big stake in these decisions that are being made here in the Capitol and there's very little consideration given to the American worker.

DOBBS: I have been saying for some time that the American working man and woman, the middle class is the least represented group in all of Washington. It sounds like you do agree.

DORGAN: I sure agree, absolutely. I mean, this so-called globalized economy, you know, there's this export of American jobs wholesale to China and Indonesia and Bangladesh, and now we hear the president and we hear leaders of the Congress say, well, you can't get Americans to do these jobs, so we need to import cheap labor.

The fact is, there is a price at which Americans would do these jobs but this Congress has not increased the minimum wage for nine years. Why? Because they want cheap labor that bottom for corporate decision makers, and so that's what is happening.

We're keeping American workers down, low wages, losing retirement benefits, losing healthcare benefits. That is not a route, in my judgment, to economic expansion in this country for all Americans.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/06/ldt.01.html