Comprehensive Immigration Bill at Senate

marlon2006 said:
Abosutely. This is consistent with what I have been saying.
I think we should try to lobby for a very specific, EB oriented bill. Moreover, most generic 'immigration comprehensive bills' already include increase of visa numbers for the EB folks anyway. We don't need to spend lots of energy lobbying for that one, since it is already there. The problem is that this illegal immigration debate is extremely controversial, it is going to be a pain and uncertain business get caugth in the middle of opposers and supporters.

I hope we can join our efforts with IV and try to expedite a bill to the EB folks only. No H1B, no illegal aliens amnesty should be in that one.
Click to expand...

marlon, your suggestion is good. But you do have to understand that passing any bill requires a lot of political will. Do we really have that much of a clout to get a stand alone bill introduced and passed? The bulk of the lawmakers don't even know our plight.

So I think having our goals as part of a bigger bill like PACE Act is a lot easier.
 
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Just heard on Rush Limbaugh

He does not think any immigration reform bill on illegal immigrants will go through. Nobody really wants to deal with it. According to him, Demacrats
see illegals as a new pool of voters and entitlements, while republicans do not want to betray the very people (employers employing illegals) that contribute money to them.
 
Guys,

Any update on whats happening with Judiciary commitee? how long it's going to take? when we can hear something positive :rolleyes: ?

-SR
 
I am fully agree with end_the_wait.

It is very difficult to iniciate stand alone bill. If you start today, it will take one year to iniciate. The only close option is "Immigration Reform" we should put our all energy.



end_the_wait said:
marlon, your suggestion is good. But you do have to understand that passing any bill requires a lot of political will. Do we really have that much of a clout to get a stand alone bill introduced and passed? The bulk of the lawmakers don't even know our plight.

So I think having our goals as part of a bigger bill like PACE Act is a lot easier.
Click to expand...
 
This can be done in parallel. When meeting or educating lawmakers about our plight, also introduce the concern that our EB process is being hold back by the guest-worker program/illegal alien issue. PACE for example is the right thing because as far as I know is more specific to our cause than other bills. I watched a program two weeks ago in which people are saying that if only an enforcement bill only is passed this year, likely other components of the bill (regarding visa numbers and guest-workers) would have a really hard to pass NEXT year as well due to the coming election.
khodalmd said:
I am fully agree with end_the_wait.

It is very difficult to iniciate stand alone bill. If you start today, it will take one year to iniciate. The only close option is "Immigration Reform" we should put our all energy.
Click to expand...
 
how long will it take for this bill to pass or not pass as it happened with s1932- are we talking in days , weeks or months or years as with other immigration related issues?
 
2011 = YEAR GUEST-WORKER PROGRAM READY
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com
Mar 7, 2006



"’It’s a serious problem,’" confesses USCIS.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said "that senators would ‘be shocked if you learned about the internal fraud and abuse at the Citizenship and Immigration Service. Officials are being bribed. Visas are being given away. Green cards are being sold ’"

Illegals pour into the US. Some are outright criminals or Muslim murderers global waiting for the Islam world rule signal.

American businesses hire them against the law. America is based upon law; but seemingly with illegals it doesn’t matter. We are a nation boasting the Statue of Liberty. But her lamp never lit the way for rapists, killers, thieves and Islamic slayers.

Now we know that if a guest-worker network were made legal, its network would not be in place until 2011. Count the number of illegals passing through till then with 11 million+ now infiltrating our culture.

Guest-worker programs would have to filter out fraud. The filter will not be in place at least until 2011—maybe.

Right now the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) can’t handle fraud cases handed it. "Adjudicators don’t have the time or tools to detect fraud," according to The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan.

The solution: rid the country of all illegals. Snuff them out somehow. Admit no more illegals. Build—now—the wall between Mexico and US. If government can’t do it, call on Extreme Makeover’s Ty Pennington. He’ll put up the fence in a week.

"’It’s a serious problem,’" confesses USCIS, that is, immigration benefit fraud.

Illegals should have been tended to years ago. We have got ourselves into one dreadful unsafe situation. There’s no excuse for it. Warning signals have been repeated constantly for years. Washington hasn’t taken heed. Reports unnumbered have been submitted to the "authorities" as they continue blithely to turn their heads. It irritates the Border Guard continually.

Women are raped just before they reach the US border. Dead bodies are found in the outstretch. Thieves rob the hopeful. Bullets fly at our own US Guard. Mexico invites Islamic zealots to make their routes through Mexico into America. Mexico’s Fox sits smiling as his turf serves as bed-and-breakfast on the way to the US.

It’s a travesty. A country that puts men on the moon can’t take care of its own broken down immigration program. A nation that can see through Operation Iraqi Freedom military in three weeks can’t block the illegal crime-infested from entering our society.

Backlogs. Paper work stacked. Short staffed. Applications piled high. Screening lapses. Incorrect decision making. Faulty approvals

Imagine this: US government "found a 30 percent fraud rate among religious worker applications and ‘the assessment also uncovered one case where law enforcement had identified an applicant as a suspected terrorist.’"

Still the US Congress and President debate the guest-worker program. Mr. Bush asks for $247 million to plan the program that won’t be here until 2011—if then.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said "that senators would ‘be shocked if you learned about the internal fraud and abuse at the Citizenship and Immigration Service. Officials are being bribed. Visas are being given away. Green cards are being sold ’"

Senators shocked.

We have Muslims wanting to intrude in our 21 US ports. And we have an immigration service rife with "’internal fraud and abuse.’"

Somewhere somebody has to start to save America from itself.

Copyright © 2006 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Email: joseph_swank@yahoo.com
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_11986.shtml
 
from washington times:

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060306-123558-4971r


Immigration agency falters in handling fraud cases
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published March 6, 2006
Advertisement
A draft government report shows the agency that would oversee any future guest-worker program doesn't have a handle on fraud, doesn't do enough to deter it, and won't have a fraud-management system in place until 2011 -- years after its proponents want a program to start.
A copy of the draft, obtained by The Washington Times, says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has looked at the prevalence of fraud in just a few of the types of visas it now issues and doesn't give adjudicators the time or tools to detect fraud or refer it to authorities for prosecution.
The report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that USCIS can't tell the extent of immigration benefit fraud, but "it is a serious problem."
USCIS is part of the Department of Homeland Security and is in charge of adjudicating immigration benefits such as citizenship and permanent residence.
The report shows an agency caught between competing priorities of fast service and taking the time to make a correct judgment. With a backlog of applications, the speedy decisions seem to be winning.
"Adjudicators we spoke with said that management's focused attention on reducing the backlog placed additional pressure on them to process applications faster, thereby increasing the risk of making incorrect decisions, including approval of potentially fraudulent applications," the GAO said.
Of the fraud assessments USCIS has done, GAO found a 30 percent fraud rate among religious worker applications and "the assessment also uncovered one case where law enforcement had identified an applicant as a suspected terrorist."
The report comes as Congress is debating whether to create a guest-worker program and whether to allow illegal aliens to participate in it. President Bush requested $247 million in his budget this year for USCIS to begin planning for a guest-worker program.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and one of those who requested the report, wouldn't talk about specifics until it is released, but he told a Judiciary Committee meeting last week that senators would "be shocked if you learned about the internal fraud and abuse at the Citizenship and Immigration Service."
Mr. Grassley said from what he's seen, it's "unrealistic" to expect USCIS to administer a guest-worker program properly.
"Officials are being bribed. Visas are being given away. Green cards are being sold," he said.
Angelica Alfonso, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the report "does not fully portray how the Department of Homeland Security has been addressing anti-fraud since its inception."
"Our top priority at USCIS continues to be preserving the integrity of the immigration system in this country, and USCIS is committed to creating an effective anti-fraud program," she said.
"To this end, USCIS has established a joint benefit fraud strategy with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], performs checks in all available enforcement systems, and has implemented a strategy for conducting benefit fraud assessments," she said.
The report also says neither USCIS nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the law-enforcement arms of the immigration services, regularly penalize those who file fraudulent applications. Thus, there is no risk to filing fraudulently and aliens or businesses seeking to employ them can keep trying until they succeed.
The law allows both administrative and criminal penalties for fraud.
According to the report, USCIS couldn't even say how many fraud cases it had referred to ICE, but the GAO said its study "indicates that most immigration fraud is not criminally prosecuted."
USCIS officials told investigators fraud is time-consuming to prove, so they usually try to find other reasons to deny an application. But without proving fraud, nothing bars the person from trying again.
Rosemary Jenks, director of government affairs at Numbers USA, which wants strict immigration limits, said that's a big vulnerability.
"As long as there's no prosecution or no penalty, the alien is free to apply again and again and again until he gets what he's looking for, so there's no reason not to play the odds if the odds are so tiny that he's going to get in trouble," she said.
 
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Posted on Wed, Mar. 08, 2006
Senate Judiciary dive into an overhaul of immigration laws
By Dave Montgomery
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee, starting work on a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, voted Wednesday to toughen diplomatic pressure on countries that refuse to take back criminals convicted of crimes in the United States.

Well over 100 amendments faced the 18-member, Republican-controlled panel as it plunged into one of the country’s most volatile issues, hoping to prepare a final bill for the full Senate by a March 27 deadline.

A maze of hot-button issues faces the committee over the next three weeks, including provisions calling for a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and a variation of President Bush’s proposal for a “guest-worker” program admitting foreign workers.

The central issue driving the debate is how to deal with the more than 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country, more than half of whom are from Mexico.

A House-passed bill calling for tough new border-security measures includes a proposed 700-mile long fence along portions of the 2,000-mile-long border from Texas to California. Some lawmakers are proposing a full, border-length fence to halt illegal immigration and smuggling.

The 305-page draft bill that serves as the starting point for the Judiciary Committee’s deliberations does not include a proposed fence, but Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman and sponsor of the draft legislation, indicated Wednesday that he would entertain debate on the proposal.

``We are open to see what people have in mind,’’ he said. But he added that a border-length fence ``might be unrealistic.’’

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, won easy approval of an amendment that would give the secretary of Homeland Security greater authority to rebuke countries that refuse to take back hundreds of convicted criminals that the United States is attempting to deport.

Most of the convicts remain in prisons after their sentences lapse, Cornyn’s office said, because their home countries won’t accept them.

The chief offenders, said Cornyn, are the governments of Iran, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Cuba. Under current law, he explained, the secretary of state can stop issuing visas to citizens of those countries, but that option is rarely used because it would punish a country’s entire population.

Cornyn’s amendment would enable the U.S. government to use selective punishment, such as refusing visits by VIPs or top diplomatic officials. Such ``target pressure,’’ Cornyn said, would be more effective in forcing the government to take back convicts.

Committee members also accepted another Cornyn amendment to provide financial assistance to state and local law enforcement departments that participate in federal-sponsored training programs that instruct officers in detaining illegal immigrants.

The panel also agreed to include a visa program that would give states plagued by doctor shortages access to foreign-born doctors.

(Montgomery covers Washington for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.)
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/nation/14048963.htm
 
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33580&dcn=todaysnews
March 10, 2006
Senate panel votes to double size of border force
By Michael Posner, CongressDaily


The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to add more border agents, investigators and fencing to stem rising illegal immigration as it worked its way through a major immigration reform bill.

In its third day of marking up the bill, the committee discussed nearly 30 amendments, approving a dozen of them by voice vote and postponing the rest for action next week.


In action during the day, the committee agreed to authorize over five years more than 10,000 new customs and border patrol agents, 1,000 investigators, and 1,250 port of entry inspectors. There was a dispute between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., principal author of the amendment to boost the number of border agents, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., over exactly how many border patrol agents would be added in addition to the 11,300 border agents now. Committee staff said they would have to resolve the exact numbers later.


In addition, the committee adopted also by voice an amendment by Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., to replace some existing fencing in Arizona and add more than 200 miles of barriers to improve border security in Arizona only. Sessions has said he planned to offer an amendment on the Senate floor to put up some 700 miles of fencing to block off some of the 2,000 miles of U.S. border with Mexico. The committee also agreed to an amendment by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., for a study to study the feasibility of more fencing along the entire border.


The committee made more progress than it did Wednesday when only three relatively minor amendments were adopted after spending all day with many senators absent, preventing a voting quorum.


"We're on our way," said Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Thursday. "We had a good session." Specter is trying to meet a target set by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to start debate on an immigration bill on March 27. Specter indicated yesterday it might not meet that goal because of the slow pace of deciding on amendments.


The committee is working its way through a 306-page draft proposed by Specter to beef up enforcement and deal with the estimated 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States by allowing qualified undocumented workers to continue working as a way to earn eventual citizenship. He also has proposed a separate guest worker program allowing foreigners to enter the country for up to six years to take jobs that cannot be filled.


Both provisions are highly controversial and are considered the heart of the bill but debate on those matters will not take place until next week at the earliest. The committee plans to work next Wednesday and Thursday on immigration.


The House passed a bill last year that deals mainly with enforcement and does not address the thorny guest worker issue.


In other amendments, the committee agreed to a Feinstein amendment to allow immigrants to stay in the United States if it was discovered their papers or passports were falsified. The immigrants would have to prove there was "a credible fear of prosecution" as the reason passports were forged to get out of countries with dictatorships.


A Sessions' plan was approved that would jail immigrants found to be illegal instead of releasing them pending immigration hearings. He argued many of those released never show up for immigration hearings and disappear. Sessions also won committee endorsement to make it a crime to run a vehicle past a customs checkpoint without stopping.


Three amendments by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, met no opposition. One would require the Department of Homeland Security to make public foreign ownership of management operations that involve national security as a way to prevent officials being surprised by situations like the Dubai port management controversy.


A Grassley proposal to allocate more immigration investigators to inland states like Iowa won easy approval. So did one to make immigrants convicted of drunk driving one of the crimes subject to deportation.


An amendment by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., extending a law allowing foreign doctors to practice in mainly rural areas with physician shortages, also gained approval.


And an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., for expedited deportation instead of incarcerating convicted illegal immigrants was also accepted. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., won approval of his proposal to bar violent criminals from sponsoring foreigners seeking entry into the United States.
 
03/15/2006: Possible Full Senate Debate Mark-Up Beginning From March 20, 2006

An unconfirmed sources of information has just released a report that the Sen. Bill Frist, Majority Leader is pushing a two-week full Senate floor debate beginning from March 20, 2006 rather than March 27, 2006. This report is indirectly supported by another news that the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressed to extend their additional mark-up on Friday, March 17 to finish up the Committee action before the end of the week.
03/15/2006: Senate Judiciary Committee Update: Additional Mark-Up Friday, 03/17/2006

Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to pickup the Sen. Specter's Mark of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills today. Initially it was scheduled for two days, March 15 and March 16, but the AILA has just obtained the information that the Committee has tentatively extended the mark-up on March 17, Friday as well in order to finish up this business within this week. As we reported earlier, the Committee has been working on a tight schedule because of the pressure from Senator Frist, the Majority Leader of the Senate to start debate on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the Senate beginning from March 27, 2006.
Now is the time for everyone to pickup the phone or send emails to the Senate Judiciary Committee members to urge them to support the bills. Otherwise it will be too late.
 
live meeting today

Does anybody know what is going on with the committee meeting today? Looks like the live broadcast is not there and nobody knows what is happening behind scenes? :confused:
 
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