Unfortunately this is not going to be resolved without our federal government going through the painful gyrations of partisan politics.
The OP mentions the Democratic Party (and the Obama White House) and its opposition to HR 6429, which basically "trades" 55,000 'diversity' visas for the same number of STEM visas. This was actually discussed on HN a few months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845982).
The OP says: "I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000 randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." In short, he says he would have made the trade.
Unfortunately, Republicans would love nothing more than to do this on immigration and call it day. To independent/swing voters, they can brag that they're not intolerant of immigrants, and in fact authored legislation that opens the doors to 55,000 immigrants exceptional in STEM. To their base, they can say there is no net increase in immigration, and they've resisted on any leniency to the immigrants currently here in the US, including the poisonous word "amnesty."
The OP claims to support elements of comprehensive immigration reform, but then basically says, "well our technology industry is suffering, and there seems to some common ground there, so can't you just agree to more STEM visas and fix the H1-B system and then go back to arguing about amnesty?"
This just isn't going to happen, because there will no longer be an argument -- Republicans will just resist any further attempts at reform. So I am glad this is the stance of people like Congressman Gutierrez. The OP said: "I hate to say this, but women in Saudi Arabia have more rights than the spouses/wives of H-1B workers; it’s inhuman the way we treat them and destroy careers and families." Well, that is a problem with our current immigration problem, but we have other problems too, such as the 22 million illegal (or undocumented, if you prefer that term) immigrants in the US. They are not exactly sitting flush with their rights, careers, and families.
We need comprehensive reform because we have a comprehensive problem. So ultimately the OP just comes across to me as, "fix what I want, even though politically, it will basically ensure that other people interested in other parts of immigration reform will get fucked." At best it's naive. At worse it's selfish.
And if you want federal government representatives that don't have to go through such stupid partisan gyrations, then you should do everything you can to elect different representatives.
I'm also really disappointed the OP brushed aside the 55K diversity visas as some sort of joke. Many people in that lottery are those who tried to obtain political asylum but could not.
Are you trying to escape poverty, war, and persecution? Well, if you can code me up this idea real quick...
Unfortunately the definition of 'persecuted' is quite narrowly defined. If you browse through Bender's Immigration Bulletin or Interpreter Releases (the two 'trade journals' of immigration law) you'll read of all kinds of horrific cases that are deemed not to meet the standard for sufficient persecution. The intention of the law is good, but the implementation is often somewhat lacking.
I don't understand the Republican position on / opposition to amnesty. Don't they remember Reagan signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 into law? Isn't Reagan supposed to be the Platonic prototype of Republicans for them?
They remember it, but in the conservative narrative it was supposed to be a single and final act that would magically bring illegal immigration to an end. Instead evil Democrats tricked Reagan.
In reality, as far as I can make out, the choice was made to prioritize speed over accuracy in the amnesty process with the result that there was quite a lot of fraud, and little was done to strengthen border security; of course there's a limit to how much you can realistically secure a ~2000 mile long border, notwithstanding the fantasies of some about installing an electrified double wall with a minefield in the middle (actual proposal I heard last year some some primary candidate). 'Business Republicans' like immigration because it fits with a free trade ethic and also provides the treasury with a hedge against demographic trends that are skewing the ratio of taxpayers to retirees downwards, while also serving as a secondary and fiscally 'free' source of foreign aid in the region. 'Social Conservative Republicans,' however, tend to be far more ideological and dogmatically insist that no compromise is possible. I personally feel there's a correlation between the absolutism of such political positions and the sincerity of their belief that bad people are going to spend eternity in a lake of fire, presumably for the entertainment of those sitting up in heaven.
The simple descriptive (rather than ideology-related) answer is just that it's really unpopular with a majority of Republican voters. So even if you're right that GOP ideology ought to consistently favor it, and even if some party leaders would actually support it, a pro-amnesty Republican probably can't win a primary.
The OP mentions the Democratic Party (and the Obama White House) and its opposition to HR 6429, which basically "trades" 55,000 'diversity' visas for the same number of STEM visas. This was actually discussed on HN a few months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845982).
The OP says: "I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000 randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." In short, he says he would have made the trade.
Unfortunately, Republicans would love nothing more than to do this on immigration and call it day. To independent/swing voters, they can brag that they're not intolerant of immigrants, and in fact authored legislation that opens the doors to 55,000 immigrants exceptional in STEM. To their base, they can say there is no net increase in immigration, and they've resisted on any leniency to the immigrants currently here in the US, including the poisonous word "amnesty."
The OP claims to support elements of comprehensive immigration reform, but then basically says, "well our technology industry is suffering, and there seems to some common ground there, so can't you just agree to more STEM visas and fix the H1-B system and then go back to arguing about amnesty?"
This just isn't going to happen, because there will no longer be an argument -- Republicans will just resist any further attempts at reform. So I am glad this is the stance of people like Congressman Gutierrez. The OP said: "I hate to say this, but women in Saudi Arabia have more rights than the spouses/wives of H-1B workers; it’s inhuman the way we treat them and destroy careers and families." Well, that is a problem with our current immigration problem, but we have other problems too, such as the 22 million illegal (or undocumented, if you prefer that term) immigrants in the US. They are not exactly sitting flush with their rights, careers, and families.
We need comprehensive reform because we have a comprehensive problem. So ultimately the OP just comes across to me as, "fix what I want, even though politically, it will basically ensure that other people interested in other parts of immigration reform will get fucked." At best it's naive. At worse it's selfish.
And if you want federal government representatives that don't have to go through such stupid partisan gyrations, then you should do everything you can to elect different representatives.