Articles Posted in Comprehensive Immigration Reform

As many Americans are about to celebrate 4th of July, we have to remember that many others among us who truly feel American, can not legally state they are one of us. Let us hope that by the end of this year we could allow many many good people among us to become legal and be proud to some day become Americans!!

Here is a post by Annaluisa Padilla from AILA that is so relevant as we celebrate July 4th, 2013:

This past week was truly a historic week for our nation. The Supreme Court ruled that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional as its “demonstrated purpose is to ensure that if any State decides to recognize same-sex marriages, those unions will be treated as second-class marriages for purposes of federal law.”

The Senate has voted to approve of the Immigration Bill they have drafted and allow the House to consider its proposal by a strong vote of 68-32. With 14 Republicans voting in favor, the Democratic leadership and the bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the original bill seemed determined to savor the moment. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. presided over the vote as senators announced their positions from their desks, in a ceremonial procedure reserved for special occasions. The Senate bill provides a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, as well as tough border security provisions that must be in place before the immigrants can gain legal status.

As the bill heads to the House, Republican elites and their well-financed pro-immigration groups are running up against opposition from the chamber’s most conservative members. Speaker John A. Boehner threw cold water on any hope that the House would vote on the Senate plan, and he insisted that whatever immigration measure his chamber took up would have to be supported by a majority of his Republican conference. “I issued a statement that I thought was pretty clear, but apparently some haven’t gotten the message: The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” he said Thursday morning. “We’re going to do our own bill.”

The legislation — drafted largely behind closed doors by the bipartisan group — brought together an unlikely coalition of Democrats and Republicans, business groups and labor unions, farmworkers and growers, and Latino, gay rights, and immigration advocates. Along the way, the legislation was shaped and tweaked by a series of backroom deals and negotiations that, in many ways, seemed to mirror its inception.

The Senate’s immigration-reform bill this week moves into its most critical stretch, with a major border-security amendment under consideration and a final vote on the landmark legislation expected before senators leave Washington for their Fourth of July break.

“It is the crucial week — the crucial week,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic on Friday.

A compromise negotiated last week by Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has reinvigorated supporters of the “Gang of Eight” bill, a comprehensive immigration-system overhaul that would include a pathway to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million immigrants now in the country illegally.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is roiling the Senate immigration debate by offering several amendments that could give him an edge in a future Republican presidential primary. Paul, who could square off against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the bill’s primary authors, in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, is taking aim at three of the most controversial areas of the bill, according to Senate aides familiar with the measures

His amendments puts pressure on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who says he wants to pass immigration reform but has not yet committed to voting for the 1,075-page Senate bill. McConnell faces reelection in 2014; while he does not yet have a credible primary challenger, he has sought to shore up his right flank by maintaining close ties to Paul.

Paul’s most ambitious proposal would eliminate the pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants and lift the caps on guest workers. It would provide immigrant workers to employers who can demonstrate need, but immigrants would have to apply for legal permanent residency and citizenship through the existing lines of their native countries. Paul is expected to file that amendment this week.

The Senate pushed contentious immigration legislation over early procedural hurdles with deceptive ease on Tuesday as President Barack Obama insisted the “moment is now” to give 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally a chance at citizenship. As a full debate and suggested amendments are made to the bill, there are several points to consider as the Senate moves closer to voting on a bill that will bring comprehensive immigration reform.

– A closed border does not facilitate a robust immigration system. Piling on additional border-enforcement measures that are grounded more in politics than effective law enforcement is a waste of resources, and ignores the fact that ending illegal immigration requires a balance of enforcement measures, new immigration programs for future labor needs, and a working E-Verify system. Texas Sen. John Cornyn has mentioned the need for stronger borders, including 90% apprehension rates at our border entries.

Also, while there is a need for secure borders, there is also a need for further streamlining and efficiently facilitating the daily cross-border flows of people, goods, and services important to the critical economic relationships between the United States and Mexico and Canada.

Introduced by Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Darrell Issa, the SKILLS Visa Act Will create a new visa program – the STEM visa program – which allocates up to 55,000 green cards to foreign students of U.S. Universities with advanced STEM degrees.

Additionally, it provides up to 10,000 green cards for foreign entrepreneurs who can attract investment from venture-capital firms to establish businesses that will create five jobs or more.

The measure is the latest in a series of individual bills introduced in the House to address immigration. Those bills contrast with the comprehensive immigration legislation the Senate Judiciary Committee approved previously. That broad bill, which is expected to advance to the full Senate floor this month, also includes provisions to raise the number of high-skill visas, which are commonly known as H-1B visas.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to pass a proposal Tuesday meant to improve information-sharing on foreign students – a direct influence of last month’s bombings at the Boston Marathon – on the ongoing immigration debate on Capitol Hill.

The amendment to the Gang of Eight immigration bill from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would require the Department of Homeland Security to transmit information about student visas into U.S. Customs and Border Protection databases. If that isn’t done within 120 days, issuing certain student visas would be suspended. Such a precaution would ensure that student visas ran current when a student enters or comes back to the U.S. on that visa.

One alleged accomplice of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect from last month’s attack in Boston, was allowed to reenter the United States earlier this year although his student visa had expired. Azamat Tazhayakov, a classmate of Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, returned to New York from Kazakhstan on Jan. 20, although the school had already dismissed him.

This Summary will outline the key provisions of the Immigration Reform Bill “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” and will focus mainly on the third large section of the Bill, Future Immigration.

This part of the Bill encompasses the provisions covering new Merit-Based Immigration System, Family-Based Immigration and Employment-Based Immigration. Below we will summarize the main points for each of these sections.

*NOTE: We would like to clarify for our readers that this section applies to “immigrant visas,” which means that after admittance to the U.S. the individuals will have lawful permanent resident status (i.e. will have green cards). This section of the Bill does not refer to nonimmigrant temporary visas.

As a lot of our readers inquired about the detailed provisions of the Immigration Reform bill, we have prepared summaries of the key provisions of the 844 page bill introduced on April 16, 2013 “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” (S. 744).

We would like to remind our readers that the bill is not yet the law. It will become the law only if it passes the Senate and the House of Representatives and is signed by the President.

Please note that this summary is not intended as a comprehensive overview of all the provisions of the bill. Please consult the full text of the bill to review the proposed Act. Click Here for the Full Text of the Bill.

The first significant steps in the process that may lead to a comprehensive overhaul of the United States immigration system have been made by a bipartisan group of eight U.S. Senators.

Some ten weeks after this group announced broad goals and an outline for compromise legislation in the U.S., they revealed a more detailed plan on April 16, 2013.

Of course, this proposed deal must first win approval by a highly divided and partisan Congress. Even this fairly moderate compromise may not survive intact.