Immigration plan doesn't add up, critics say

"Ray," 45, is a computer programmer from Singapore with a graduate degree. He speaks fluent English and has never worked in the United States, but he has a job offer from a U.S. company.

"Carla," 29, is a hospital orderly from Mexico with a high school equivalency diploma. She knows enough English to have passed the government's citizenship tests in English and civics and has worked for six years in the United States, where she lives with her stepfather and her mother, a legal resident.

It sounds like a word problem from a high school textbook, but it's from a congressional staff summary of the new Senate immigration bill, which is using simple math to offer a solution to long-standing philosophical divides over who should be granted a green card, which signifies legal permanent residence.

By assigning points for quantitative factors, including education, employment, English fluency and extended family, a bipartisan group of senators hopes to calm the passionate immigration debates of the last 40 years.

But as details emerge, the same businesses and legislators the formula was designed to reconcile have started picking it apart -- determined to either rewrite the formula to suit their needs or scrap it altogether.

Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, called the formula a "Rubik's Cube" that pitted businesses against each other.

"We see a need in both skilled and unskilled types of jobs, and we do have a concern that it favors the skilled over the unskilled," Johnson said.

Companies that depend on high-skilled labor don't like the plan either.

"What they want to do is create a whole new layer of bureaucracy and expect that [it] is going to keep pace with the changing economy,'' said Robert Hoffman, vice president of government and public affairs for Oracle Corp.

The point system would mark a radical departure from current immigration policy, which largely favors family ties in distributing about 1.1 million coveted green cards a year.

Under the new system, the number of green cards allocated to relatives of either a U.S. citizen or a current green card holder would fall from 87% to 62%, while those based on occupation would nearly triple, from 13% to 38%.