May 7, 2005	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27, 1426

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WASHINGTON, May 6: The US House of Representatives has approved tighter immigration and driver’s licence regulations, which were included in an $82 billion spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill includes a provision to make it more difficult for immigrants to win asylum in the United States based on persecution or human rights abuses from their home countries.

It effectively bars states from issuing licences to undocumented immigrants, but also includes a provision to lift the cap on the number of H-2B visas for temporary seasonal workers. The Senate, which has been on a week-long recess, is expected to give swift approval of the bill the week of May 9, before sending it to President Bush to be signed into law.

As many as 368 congressmen, from both Republican and Democratic parties, voted for the bill on Thursday evening. Only 58 voted against it. On May 3, a joint conference committee resolved differences between House and Senate versions of and sent the compromise back to the respective chambers for approval. Under congressional rules, neither chamber could amend the conference committee bill.

The key sticking point that delayed passage of the bill has been over amendments in both chambers on immigration and border security measures.

“I am disgusted by the process by which this legislation came to the floor and by the immigration-related provisions in the bill,” Rep. Eliot Engel, A Democrat from Bronx, said in a statement to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

After the vote, Mr Engel said the Congress needed to have a full debate on how to reform immigration policy and secure US borders. Another Democrat, Rep Nita Lowey, also criticized the immigration provisions.

“The anti-immigrant legislators really used a legislative tactic to bypass full discussion of what is a complex and controversial issue,” said Chung-Wha Hong, deputy director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

“It’s a driver’s license bill in rhetoric, but in reality it has an anti-immigrant agenda,” she said.