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If the House were to pass H-1B expansion, the GOP would win support from at least some in the...

Immigration reform advocates are fond of citing broad support for their cause. But in fact the coalition behind the Senate Gang of Eight comprehensive reform bill is fragile and loosely cobbled together. How could Big Labor and the Chamber of Commerce and the tech world and Big Agriculture all unite behind one bill? Very tentatively.

It wouldn't take much to break the coalition apart. And if that happens, the effort to enact comprehensive immigration reform could blow up, not just for the moment, but for some time to come. And there are signs that is exactly what is occurring now.

Compete America is a group that calls itself the "leading advocate for reform of U.S. immigration policy for highly educated foreign professionals." Its members are some of the biggest names in the tech world: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft and many others.

The companies, as well as other high-profile groups, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, have given millions to the cause of comprehensive immigration reform. The main reason is that they want an expansion of the H-1B visa program that allows high-skilled immigrants into the United States, thus expanding the labor pool for tech companies.

Of course, comprehensive immigration reform involves much more than H-1B visas. But the tech giants supported comprehensive reform, with its increases in unskilled immigration, its legalization of currently illegal immigrants, its path to citizenship, its byzantine agricultural provisions and much, much more because they wanted the H-1B boost.

For a long time, opponents of comprehensive immigration reform have thought: Why shouldn't the Republican-controlled House pass an H-1B expansion as a stand-alone bill? If the tech people got what they wanted, would they and their millions of dollars really stick around to fight hard for the rest of comprehensive reform? Passing an H-1B bill would be an excellent way to split the fragile pro-reform coalition.

Now, it looks as if that could be happening. On March 19, the executive director of Compete America, Scott Corley, published an op-ed urging lawmakers to pass the SKILLS Act, which is a measure to increase H-1B visas. "There is widespread agreement among both parties and in both chambers of Congress that high-skilled immigration is good for the economy," Corley wrote. "Congress needs to act now."

The move set off alarm bells among Democrats. If the tech people were to pull out, and take their money with them, or even if they just lost their passion for the fight where would that leave the tenuous reform coalition? In a much weaker position.

So on Tuesday, an unhappy Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin wrote to the tech CEOs saying Senate Democrats will not -- no way, no how -- support a standalone H-1B bill. "It was my understanding that high tech was committed to supporting [the Gang of Eight bill] because the industry's top priorities are addressed in our legislation," Durbin wrote. "I am troubled by recent statements suggesting that some in the technology industry may shift their focus to passage of stand-alone legislation that would only resolve the industry's concerns."

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Democrats squawk as cracks form in immigration coalition

Spanish Language Network Univision Signs Deal With Hillary Clinton - The Kelly File Exclusive
Spanish Language Network Univision Signs Deal With Hillary Clinton - The Kelly File Exclusive =========================================== **Please Click B...

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Spanish Language Network Univision Signs Deal With Hillary Clinton - The Kelly File Exclusive - Video

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed her diplomatic record on Thursday night, saying her time atop the State Department played a role in "restor[ing] America's leadership in the best sense."

Some Republican critics have charged that Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat was heavy on jet-setting but thin on tangible accomplishments, but Clinton said that much of her work -- with Russia, with Iran, and elsewhere -- laid the groundwork for efforts that have now kicked into high gear.

In her forthcoming memoir, Clinton said, she devotes an entire chapter to the negotiations on Iranian sanctions that many have since credited with bringing the Islamic Republic to the negotiating table over its nuclear program.

"I write obviously a whole chapter about this, because this is the kind of...painstaking, microscopic advantages and putting together the international coalition" that eventually yields results," Clinton said, according to Politico.

That effort "changed the calculus inside the Iranian government," she said. "It took an enormous amount of effort on the part of a lot of us."

Clinton's remarks came during a panel discussion kicking off the "Women in the World" summit in New York City. Earlier on Thursday, she helped launch a new program from the U.S. Agency for International Development that hopes to harness new developments in science and technology to combat poverty.

More generally, Clinton said, she and the rest of the administration played a role in restoring American leadership in the world after two controversial wars and a global financial crisis.

I'm "very proud of the stabilization and the really solid leadership that the administration" in 2009 when she and President Obama took the reins, she explained, saying that leadership helped the U.S. "deal with problems like Ukraine" and other recent international crises.

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Russia's incursion into Ukraine is an effort "to rewrite the boundaries of post-World War II Euro...

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Hillary Clinton defends her record as secretary of state

NEW YORK, April 4 (UPI) -- Hillary Clinton and Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund exchanged a high-five during an appearance in New York at the suggestion both could be presidents.

The two women were in a discussion Thursday night moderated by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as part of the "Women in the World" event. Friedman said Clinton could become U.S. president, while Lagarde, a former French cabinet minister and now the IMF's managing director, could be president of the European Commission.

Clinton remained cagy about her own plans, refusing to answer several times when Friedman asked her if she will seek the Democratic nomination in 2016.

After years of experience as a lawyer, U.S. senator, and secretary of state, as well as being the wife of a governor who then became president, Clinton said the double standard for women still exists. She said its survival in a "transformational" society like the United States shows how strong it is.

We have all either experienced it or at the very least seen it. And there is a deep set of cultural psychological views that are manifest through this double standard, Clinton said.

Clinton said the news media helps keep the double standard alive. She said young women need to learn how to deal with criticism -- not taking it personally -- and to develop resilience.

Believe me, she said, this is hard-won advice Im now putting forward here. Its not like you wake up and understand this. But its a process. And you need other women, you need your friends, to support you.

[Politico] [Washington Post]

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Hillary Clinton says women still face double standard

For decades, questions posed to Hillary Rodham Clinton have turned on the subject of hair. But for all the eyerolls, that famous coif in all its scrunchie-to-bob iterations has turned out to be a very helpful talking point.

The occasion Thursday night was Tina Browns Women In the World conference in New York, and it was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman introduced by Brown as a sensitive man who asked the former secretary of State and her co-panelist, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde, to reflect on whether there was still a double standard in the media about how we talk about women in public life.

To laughter, Friedman recalled a news clip in which Clinton had said shed flown all night to meet with a foreign leader and had tied her hair back and you said when you came into the room, he was really frightened, Friedman said, because he had heard that when your hair was back, you were going to deliver unpleasant news.

Really, Tom? Clinton said with pause as the audience laughed (and Friedman rejoined that he was just moderating at the forum as a human sacrifice).

There is a double standard, obviously," she said. "We have all either experienced it or at the very least seen it. And there is a deep set of cultural psychological views that are manifest through this double standard.

Clinton recalled that as a young lawyer she had read an advice column in an Arkansas newspaper advising male professionals to decorate their office with family pictures to show they were a responsible, reliable family man, while suggesting that women should not, because visitors would think you wont be able to concentrate on your work.

Some of those attitudes, we know, persist, Clinton said at the New York summit Thursday. And thats why it's important that we surface them, and why we talk about them, and help men and women recognize when they are crossing over from an individual judgment which were all prone to make and have a right to make about somebody, man or woman into a stereotype.

So yeah, she added, the double standard is alive and well, and I think, in many respects the media is principal propagator of its persistence. And I think the media needs to be more self-consciously aware of that.

Touching on now-familiar talking points that have helped her connect with millennials, and particularly young women, Clinton said she was still concerned about the disparate attitudes of young men and women toward professional advancement.

Too many young women are harder on themselves than circumstances warrant, said Clinton, who is weighing a run for the presidency in 2016. At this point in my life and career Ive employed so many young people and one of the differences is, whenever I would say to a young woman, I want you to do this. I want you to take on this extra responsibility. I want you to move up almost invariably they would say Do you think I can? or Do you think Im ready?

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Hillary Clinton: For women, 'Double standard is alive and well'