After months of closed-door negotiations, the Senate?s bipartisan ?Gang of Eight? offered a legislative summary of its proposal for comprehensive immigration reform. Here is how the Senate gang handled the four hottest immigration flashpoints: border security, legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, changing or establishing the programs under which future workers can come into the country, and how to better shape the family-based immigration system.
1. Border security
The senators offer up $4.5 billion to help secure the US-Mexico border ($3 billion) and to improve fencing on the border ($1.5 billion). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has six months to develop a plan for each task. The goal is to deter or capture more than 90 percent of potential border-crossers in certain key zones.
These zones are called ?high risk border sectors? and are defined by having more than 30,000 apprehensions per year. In 2012, there were three such zones. In 2005, eight of the nine southern border sectors were deemed "high risk."
If that 90 percent "effectiveness rate" has yet to be reached within five years, Congress would offer up another $2 billion and the president and congressional leaders would appoint a commission of southwest border governors and security experts to help determine a way to get to 90 percent during the next five years.
In addition, DHS is required to implement a mandatory system for employment verification known as E-Verify in all businesses throughout the US, and it would need to electronically track who enters and exits the country at seaports and airports. The current system tracks only those who enter.
2. Undocumented immigrants in the US
America?s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants will have a chance to become citizens, but will have to wait for the border security measures noted above to be instituted before they can complete a decade-plus-long process.
The exceptions to this are young, undocumented immigrants known as DREAMers (after previous legislation that would have offered them a special route to citizenship), as well as some agricultural workers. Both would have a streamlined path to citizenship, with the wait for DREAMers being five years.
Everyone else, however, would apply for ?registered prospective immigrant? status by passing a background check and paying a $500 fine alongside assessed taxes. That status would be good for six years but could not be obtained before DHS submits its two border security plans to Congress. RPI status would give the newly-documented the ability to travel internationally and work in the US and be renewed for another $500.
After 10 years as an RPI, immigrants could apply to become green card holders through a new immigration category (see item No. 3) if they meet several criteria:
- Continuous presence and employment in the United States over that decade.
- Up-to-date tax payments.
- Demonstrated knowledge of US civics and English.
- Payment of a $1,000 fine.
In addition, all individuals who are waiting for green cards when the bill is enacted will have to have been processed through the immigration system before RPIs get green cards. That means those in the country illegally today would have gone to the ?back of the line.?
After five years with a green card, these immigrants would be able to apply for US citizenship, meaning the first bloc of potential US citizens beyond DREAMers and agriculture workers would take their oaths just before 2030.
3. Streamlining the visa process
The senate?s immigration reformers would completely revamp temporary worker programs.
It would increase the number of high-skilled visas from 65,000 to 110,000. From there, the number would fluctuate based on need, with a ceiling of 180,000. The new law would require higher wages than the current law, and the jobs would need to be posted a central jobs bank hosted by the Department of Labor so Americans could find and apply for the positions, too.
It would create a new low-skilled worker program called the W visa, beginning in 2015. An initial pool of 20,000 temporary workers would grow to as many as 75,000 over four years. At that point, a new bureau responsible for studying labor conditions would decide how many visas would be available.
And it would scrap the current agricultural worker program (H2-A visas) for a pair of new visa offers. Agricultural workers, like DREAMers, would have an opportunity for an expedited path to citizenship under certain conditions.
The bill, however, emphasizes the need to shift immigration resources toward immigrants with advanced degrees and those with master?s degree or better in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) from US universities who met certain specifications. It specifies that 40 percent of all employment-based visas be given to those two groups.
Beyond employment-based visas, the bill would create an entirely new category of "merit based" visas that would take into account education, employment, and length of residence in the US, among other considerations. These would come into effect five years after the bill's enactment and begin at 120,000 visas, though that could rise to a maximum of 250,000. It is this category that those who are in the country illegally now would be funneled into after a decade as RPIs.
4. Family reunification
The Senate bill will likewise shift America?s immigration policy toward family members.
Chiefly, the bill focuses on getting spouses and children into the country, but it will cut back on allowing siblings and adult, married children to join their families in the US.
Those who could bring their spouses and children to the country without delay include green card holders, employment-based immigrants, doctoral degree holders in any field, some physicians, and some immigrants of ?extraordinary ability? (like athletes, artists, executives, and others). Limits or bars on immigration among these core family members in the past put pressure on spouses and children to illegally immigrate to be with their loved ones, advocates say, and these changes will help alleviate those concerns.
Moreover, the bill says that the entire backlog of family-based visa applicants will be cleared within 10 years.
But US citizens will no longer be able to sponsor siblings, beginning 18 months after the bill is enacted. And the only married, adult children who can apply to join their families will be those under age 31. The bill also eliminates a long-standing conservative target: the diversity visa program, which brings in immigrants from countries (many in Africa) underrepresented in the wider immigration pool.
Marissa Contreras, 15, of Richmond, Va., whose father is from El Salvador and whose mother is from the United States, poses for a portrait at the end of the "Rally for Citizenship," a rally in support... more? Marissa Contreras, 15, of Richmond, Va., whose father is from El Salvador and whose mother is from the United States, poses for a portrait at the end of the "Rally for Citizenship," a rally in support of immigration reform, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Bipartisan groups in the House and Senate are said to be completing immigration bills that include a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million immigrants with illegal status. "I just felt in my heart that it was important to be here," says Contreras. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) less? ?Related stories
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-reform-101-does-senate-plan-address-four-133615268.html
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