Congress returned July 8 from its week-long recess for the July Fourth holiday, and already a number of labor- and employment-related issues are cropping up on Capitol Hill. With the two chambers set to take a month off in August, lawmakers will certainly stay busy through July.

Immigration is among the issues in Congress that will be sure to get the most attention this month. The Senate passed its comprehensive immigration overhaul June 27, which would make numerous changes to employment-related immigration law. Attention is now focused on the House, where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has signaled that the chamber will not take up the Senate measure.

Meanwhile, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups, including the Service Employees International Union, announced last week that it would spend the month of July pushing the House to pass a comprehensive bill, rather than the individual bills that have passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. That panel has approved several measures, including those dealing with agricultural workers, high-skilled immigrant workers, and employment verification. Democrats are generally opposed to those Republican-backed bills.

SEIU also said July 8 that it had bought $200,000 worth of advertising time on Spanish-language radio stations.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has been working on a comprehensive measure for months, but nothing has yet been made public.

On top of all that, the House Republican caucus will meet behind closed doors July 10 to discuss various possibilities for addressing the immigration issue. It's possible that the House may not act on immigration until after the August recess, or address the issue at all. 

Back on the Senate side, July 10 will also be a day to watch: that's when the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is scheduled to hold a markup of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. That bill, which has been introduced numerous times since the mid-1990s, would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The last time a markup was held on the measure was in 2002. Of course, even if the bill is passed by the full Senate--a big 'if'--it still would face an uphill climb in the House.

And there are other pending issues, too: the Senate Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the Labor Department are scheduled to hold markups this week on an appropriations bill that would fund the Labor Department for fiscal year 2014.

The Senate has still not held a confirmation vote on President Obama's nominee to head DOL, Thomas Perez. Nor has there been a vote on his nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.

Anything could happen, but lawmakers' time is limited, so it will be interesting to see what happens in July, and what gets pushed back to when Congress gets back in September.