What could until last week have been President George W. Bush’s crowning domestic policy achievement has instead become another reminder of his depreciated political capital in Washington. A landmark immigration bill that was supposed to provide the greatest reform to US immigration in two decades has stalled in the US Congress. Some advocates worry it may already be dead.

Indians have focused on the bill for its impact on H-1B visas and the acquisition of green cards. But the legislation has been fiercely debated in the United States almost solely on the implications it would have on illegal immigrants. The illegal immigrant issue is nothing to scoff at; the numbers involved are staggering, even by Indian standards, with estimates of clandestine migrants varying between seven and twenty million. It is no surprise that the plight of a few hundred thousand Indian white-collar workers has been all but overlooked by the US media.

Indian lobby groups, US software companies and free market enthusiasts have been ardently advocating an increase in the number of H-1B high-skilled worker visas and the easier acquisition of green cards for such workers. Though their arguments have been largely well-articulated, their efforts are unlikely to sway US legislators on both sides of the political aisle who support protectionist economic policies.

The immigration debate’s impact on highly skilled Indian employees has slipped under the radar, but the criticism of outsourcing and employee-based immigration will persist. On the plus side, corporate pressure from Microsoft, Google, NASSCOM and USINPAC, among others, to dismantle barriers for these workers, will continue unabated.

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