Immigration bills

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posmd

Registered Users (C)
Spent a few days looking through some of the immigration bills, senate judiciary comittee testimonies and so on.
There is clearly an intent at the legislative level to fix the immigration mess. It seems predominantly focussed on the illegal immigrant problem, but with some provisions for the employment based immigration as well. It does not appear that the majority of americans or legislators are against expanding legal employment based immigration if they can get provisions with teeth at controlling the illegal immigration problem.
The upcoming testimonies in front of the senate judiciary comittee will be quite interesting. It will be especially interesting to see any difference in the winds to the hearings on July 26th.
I am optimistic there will be some legislative action within the next year, as it would appear to be one of the few issues that President Bush could bring together some consensus on. In this light the disarray that conservative republicans are in might after all work out well for a more centrist solution.
I think the employer/business community albeit not as staunchly supportive of the immigrant workers are still somewhat on our side, their vociferousness being somewhat quelled by a variety of factors not the least of which is the ease of outsourcing a lot of work.
Finally I am linking to a couple of places. One is a senate testimony by Tamar Jacoby of the manhattan institute, and the other is a number of proposals put forth by the business community and which will no doubt recieve discussion in the upcoming hearings.

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/jacoby07-26-05.htm

http://pubweb.fdbl.com/news1.nsf/9a...2ed1d2a76a6f627d852570930074ed00?OpenDocument


So overall, I think the current mess is about as bad as it will get. There is likely to be some improvement, the exact increment of it and who will benefit maximally of course is all up to the vagaries of politics and ultimately for us luck.
So, overall guys and girls though this retrogression hurricane hit all of us. There is hope.

Best wishes.
 
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Thank you for this tremendous news!
Overall looks very promising except the fact that it precludes the already adjudicated I-140 beneficieries from obtaining EAD,AP or extensions of H1bs, and filing 485, is a gross injustice to a wast number of such people.So this needs to be addressed in the bill. All of us should immediately contact the congressmen, senate and other representatatives to support this bill and to make amendments in the above issue.
The following is an excerpt from the article you had provided the link address.
{Adjustment of Status
The proposed language would also provide that an individual for whom an I-140 immigrant visa petition with supplemental $500 fee is filed may file an adjustment of status application even if a visa number is not immediately available. The adjustment application can still not be approved until a visa number is available (i.e., until the beneficiary's priority date is current), but the filing of an adjustment application presumably entitles the applicant to the ancillary benefits of an adjustment filing, including eligibility for an employment authorization document (EAD) and an advance parole travel document. Beneficiaries of I-140 petitions which are pending on the date the law is enacted may, upon the payment of the supplemental petition fee, take advantage of the opportunity to file an adjustment application even if their priority dates are not yet current. However, the bill would appear to preclude beneficiaries of previously approved I-140 petitions from benefiting from the opportunity of applying for adjustment of status under this provision.}
 
A great news

It sounds to be very promising and looks like will practically solve a lot of problems. Can't wait till this bill gets passed...
 
Every day, I include in my prayers that the politicians don't try to 'fix' the immigration issue.

Every time they have done so in the past, they have profoundly screwed the legal immigrants for the benefit of business and the undocumented migrants.

If we wait for retrogression to blow over, a couple of people will have trouble getting their GCs for the next year or two and after that we will be back to business as usual.

When congress 'fixes' things, they tend to forget that this costs money. It will take USCIS years to adjust their capacity to accomodate the volume created by ANY of the new immigration bills and throw everyone back by many many years (who do you think should process the millions of 'guest worker visas' and other nonsense written into all these half cocked immigration bills ?).
 
hadron said:
Every day, I include in my prayers that the politicians don't try to 'fix' the immigration issue.

Every time they have done so in the past, they have profoundly screwed the legal immigrants for the benefit of business and the undocumented migrants.

If we wait for retrogression to blow over, a couple of people will have trouble getting their GCs for the next year or two and after that we will be back to business as usual.

When congress 'fixes' things, they tend to forget that this costs money. It will take USCIS years to adjust their capacity to accomodate the volume created by ANY of the new immigration bills and throw everyone back by many many years (who do you think should process the millions of 'guest worker visas' and other nonsense written into all these half cocked immigration bills ?).
Click to expand...


Couldn't agree more. All this bills want the cheapest work force for the pruductive years of their life and then kick them out. All amnesties go to illegals. So if I work in this country legally for 20yrs and pay taxes but my GC is not processed due to xillion loopholes I don't get any rights. This bills are more about votes and if you notice it tries to keep all parties happy, they all have a provision for "control/enforcement" and then "increasing numbers/categories". Now how many unused family visa numbers are there anyways?
 
Here is hadrons immigration reform:

- an end to the 'diversity immigrant' lottery bull#(_#$. Go into the downtown area of any US city with more than 200k population and you can get all the diversity you want. This was an issue when US immigration was largely white and from ireland and europe. Today this lottery has lost its function.

- an end to family based immigration as we know it (what benefit is it to the US to import the sometimes functionally illiterate adult children of central american peasants ? What benefit is it to the US to import the aging parents of middle aged immigrants who require considerable medical care on US taxpayers expense ?)

- an end to the exemption from all the rules for spouses. It just promotes marriage fraud on a large scale.

- introduction of the 'conditional permanent residency' for employment based categories (if you got sponsored and you prooved that you can hold a job for 3 years:--> you are welcome. If the first thing you do after you got sponsored as 'manager convenience store' is to leave the job and go on the dole--> good bye)

- exemption from labor certification for any job paying more than 100k (or upper 2% of the income bracket). Move jobs over 100k into EB-1 category, eliminate quota for EB-1.

- exemption of NIW positions from quotas (it is in the f#$%* national interest to get this immigrant into the country. Why the #$*& do you want to restrict his ability to settle here)

- abolition of the adjustment of status process. You get a sponsor, get a LC (or exemption), file an I140 and go to the consular post in your country to get your visa. The AOS is a holdover from the times when you could just 'register' as permanent resident after you stayed in the country for 5 years and prooved that you were not a public charge. Today, it just maintains a huge buerocracy largely engaged in keeping itself busy by issuing various APs and EADs (which make 60% of the workload at the USCIS regional centers. If they could adjudicate I140s instead, we would have a processing time measured in weeks)

- an end to the 3/10 year re-entry ban for people who overstayed their visas. The only thing this created was a group of 10mio people who are 'trapped' in the US because if they leave the country, they will never be able to go back. They are needed to run the farms in the south allright, but they should do that going back and forth on H2b and H2a visas (guest worker visa my #(*. What do you think the H2b is for ?)

- an end to the border cards.
 
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Sounds good

Hadron,

Your ideas sound reasonable. Have you tried discussing it with any congressman or senator? Sending your ideas to the ombudsman may be a good one also.
We need some sane refrom in the way GC process is done.

MDGUTS
 
My suggestions will never fly. There are too many vested interests to make sure that none of this happens.

The first group against it would be the immigration attorneys. Only because the system is so #_*+(@ up we need them in the first place. The canadian or new zealand immigration procedures are fairly standardized and self-explanatory. The majority of people (I know of anyway) who went to these countries did it themselves, A-Z.

And abolishing family based immigration ? This is the 'third rail' of immigration politics (You touch it, you die). The majority of immigrants who can vote in this country are family immigrants. If anyone wanted to do something on immigration to get the latino vote, he will abolish all limits on family immigration, rather than the opposite as I suggested.
 
One inch at a time

We could try and pitch the more sellable ideas first to the politicians. Some of your ideas that may be easy to sell are :

- introduction of the 'conditional permanent residency' for employment based categories

- exemption from labor certification for any job paying more than 100k

Move jobs over 100k into EB-1 category, eliminate quota for EB-1.

- exemption of physician NIW positions from quotas
 
Chain reaction

Interesting tread guys. That is a good point about the illegals. However a precedent is there for this back in the 1980s under regan where amnesty was declared for them. Either way of course none of them get any sympathies from hardworking law abiding long suffering people like ourselves.
Yet in a democracy, majority rules and this is so even if the majority is stupid and ignorant. Absolutely the problem of the illegals is a hot political topic with entrenched views on both sides, hence the gridlock.
I am also of the view that current employment based immigration does nothing but to punish the honest. I have seen all sorts of devious underhanded and cunning methods used. Most of these perpetrators are sitting pretty and I am still waiting going through the regular channels. Everything from hardship waivers, to political asylum to phony marriages, to phony jobs that lenghten the queue for us all has been abused and continues to be abused. Of course the brain dead diversity lottery serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Family based immigration is one of those things done out of good intentions but with totally f%^*^$ up results for the country as a whole. It is always the initial legal immigrant that is to the benefit of the country and the chain reaction that follows is of course payback.
I agree that there are so many special interest groups that it will take a lot of determined leadership and frankly a lot of frustration from the average joe public before any of this changes.
Anyway let see how things play out.
 
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The good Lord protect us from fire, famine, locusts and another amnesty.

Anything, politicians can come up with will seriously harm everybody but the undocumented workers. The system will get clogged up (again), FBI fingerprint checks which are a matter of weeks now will take months to complete.
 
Niw

I would say atleast the NIW being exempt form quotas is a reasonable start. For heavens sake it is in the NATIONAL INTEREST. It has already been deemed so by the US government. Whats the point in exempting them from labour and then putting them in the same queue as everyone else. It seems illogical. A precedent for these exemptions does exist eg J1 waiver physicians are exempt from the H1b quota. This would be along similar lines. Now whether this can be accomplished without the huge political stick weilded by rural hospitals and health networks is another matter. Of course the sad part is the AMA colludes with rural hospitals in these endeavours and left to their own devises would have us stay here working under any conditions for life!
Either way certainly exemptions for the NIW can certainly be argues with some force and would have some resonance with anyone including joe public.
 
The only thing that might be politically achievable is the quota exemption (or inclusion in the schedule A special quota) for NIW. I have limited access to my states congressman (who is a member of the rural healthcare coalition) and I will try to pitch it to him.

The H1b cap exemption for J1 waiver docs was the result of intelligent people talking to Sen Conrad. He put it in the amendment and managed to squeeze it into some defense appropriations bill. Unfortunately, this is the only way to get laws passed in this country. The big immigration reform will only happen if the republicans start to see some political capital in it. Given their current problems (their congressional leadership facing jailtime), I doubt they plan on taking on such a hotbutton issue.
 
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Making progress

We could start with NIW being kept exempt from the quota. A lot of senators will buy this as a good idea.

Lets start pitching this to them.
I will also write to Sen Conrad and to Sen Domineci, etc

At least this is a start.
We can hope they can attach this to another bill and pass this as a supplemental bill.

MDGUTS
 
Email address of Senators on Budget committee

PLEASE AT LEAST EMAIL THE SENATORS LOOKING AT THE IMMIGRATION RELIEF PROVISION ATTACHED TO THE BUDGET BILL

Edward Kennedy
kennedy.senate.gov/contact.html
senator@kennedy.senate.gov

Jon Kyl
kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm
info@kyl.senate.gov

John Cornyn
cornyn.senate.gov/contact/index.html

Sam Brownback
brownback.senate.gov/CMEmailMe.cfm
brownback@brownback.senate.gov

Arlen Specter
specter.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactInfo.Home
senator_specter@specter.senate.gov

Orrin Hatch
hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Offices.Contact
senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov

Patrick Leahy
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Chuck Grassley
grassley.senate.gov/webform.htm
chuck_grassley@grassley.senate.gov

Joseph Biden
senator@biden.senate.gov

Mike DeWine
dewine.senate.gov
senator_dewine@dewine.senate.gov

Herb Kohl
kohl.senate.gov/gen_contact.html
senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov

Jeff Sessions
sessions.senate.gov/email/contact.cfm
senator@sessions.senate.gov

Dianne Feinstein
feinstein.senate.gov/email.html
senator@feinstein.senate.gov

Lindsey Graham
lgraham.senate.gov/index.cfm?mode=contact
Senator_LGraham@lgraham.senate.gov

Russell Feingold
russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov

Charles Schumer
schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm
senator@schumer.senate.gov

Richard Durbin
durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm
dick@durbin.senate.gov

Tom Coburn
coburn.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

Please send the mails
 
Some of the emails may not work

Some of the email addresses may not work. It may be best to call or fax. Calling the key folks in the office of the respective Senators may be best.
 
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