As many people know by now, 2013 has been a year for proposed immigration reform legislation. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” or Senate Bill 744, is a broad-based proposal for reforming the U.S. immigration system written by a bipartisan group of eight Senators known as the “Gang of Eight.” The Senators introduced the bill in the spring of 2013, which attempts to address all aspects of the immigration process from border and enforcement issues to legal immigration reforms. It makes changes to the family and employment-based visa categories for immigrants, provides critical due-process protections, increases the availability of nonimmigrant workers to supplement all sectors of the workforce, and provides legal status to 11 million undocumented immigrants within the United States.
If enacted, Senate Bill 744 would require that a series of enforcement measures, or “triggers,” go into effect prior to completing the legalization process. For example, although undocumented immigrants will be allowed to register for the new Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) program almost immediately, before those in RPI status can apply to become lawful permanent residents the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must certify that the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy is deployed and operational, 700 miles of fencing is complete, 38,405 border patrol agents are deployed, and the E-Verify employment verification system is in place, among other requirements. Other aspects of the bill, such as changes in family and employment-based immigration categories, would go into effect gradually, giving DHS the opportunity to reduce extensive backlogs that have built up due to a lack of available visa numbers.
While the Senate passed the legislation, it is now at an impasse in the House of Representatives. The House Members back in July 2013 were not very supportive of the proposed legislation as is – and emerged with a new plan, which included some of the following:
1) The new plan would take the provisional legal status and right to work granted to the undocumented at the outset, and reconfigure it as “probation.”
The plan would require undocumented immigrants to admit having broken U.S. laws and admit guilt (in a civil sense), and enter into a probationary phase, during which they’d have very similar legal rights to the ones they would have under the provisional legal status in the Senate bill.
This concession is designed to help Republicans embrace comprehensive reform. It is meant to give Republicans a response to the charge of “amnesty” — the claim that a path to citizenship will reward lawbreakers — by instead requiring the undocumented to admit wrongdoing and put themselves on a species of probation.
2) The plan would put in place a new trigger involving E-Verify that would be required to end that period of “probation.”
The plan would stipulate that E-Verify — the system to allow businesses to determine eligibility to work in the U.S. — must be fully operational after five years. If it isn’t, all of those on probation would lose that status and revert to illegal status. This is significantly tougher than the Senate bill, which requires E-Verify to be operational for the path to citizenship to be set in motion, but would not revoke provisional legal status if it isn’t operational.
In conclusion, since July 2013, immigration reform seems to have stalled. In fact, some experts speculate that immigration reform is unlikely to be enacted in 2013.
Despite the lack of progress as the bill sits with the House, some insiders report that a few Republicans are working behind the scenes to advance immigration legislation. Others say that some House republicans are working behind the scenes in order to enact immigration reform. Alternatively, advocates of immigration reform continue to push for comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible, with the primary goal of obtaining a path to citizenship for immigrants who are currently in the country illegally.
All said and explained in this article does not constitute a legal opinion and does not replace legal advice. Responsibility for using the wordings and opinions conveyed in this article relies solely and entirely on the reader.
This article was written by Dotan Cohen Law Offices, working in the field of immigration law in the United States, Canada, Australia and England.
