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Sen. Reid recommends increased cap for family-based petitions

http://www.asianjournal.com/dateline...petitions.html

Quote:

LAS VEGAS – Saying he does not want to make the family-based visa backlog worse, US Sen. Harry Reid is inclined to recommend more relaxed provisions on family-based petitions in the immigration reform program being hammered out in the senate.

“What I’m hopeful is to actually enlarge [the number of family-based visas] rather than shrink it,” he told Asian Journal in an interview at his Las Vegas office recently.

Reid’s statement runs contrary to what US Sen. Lindsey Graham noted earlier, that her[his] goal is to “replace a chained migration immigration system with an economic based immigration system.”

The Republican senator from South Carolina had told that she wants to “reserve green cards based on the economic needs of the country.”

Graham is a member of the “Gang of 8”or the bipartisan group of senators tasked to craft a legislation proposal that would overhaul the country’s immigration system.

Reid noted he is confident that his recommendation to allow more family-based petitions will get the support of other legislators during deliberations in Congress.

The Democrat senator from Nevada also said his proposal will address the exceedingly lengthy twenty-year wait to get a family-based petition approved.

“They wait 20 years, imagine that,” he said in the interview. “We have so many family reunification problems, take for example with Filipinos,” Reid added.

In family-based petitions, the Philippines tops the list of countries where individuals sponsored by siblings wait the longest to enter the United States.

Records from the US Department of State show that as of March 2013, petitions in this category that are being processed are those that were submitted in 1989, or 24 years ago.

Mexico is a close second, as petitions in the same category that are being processed are those lodged in 1996 or 18 years ago.

Family-based petitions from China and India that are under process, meanwhile, are those submitted in 2001 or twelve years ago.

The huge backlog in the processing of family-based petitions is due mainly to the limited amount of visas made available by the government each year. The Immigration and Nationality Act puts an annual cap of 226,000 visas in the family-based category.

It is this limit that Reid wants to change to get rid of the current backlog.

“We could not make it any worse than what it is now,” he said.

Reid, the senate majority leader who controls the legislative calendar, expects to deliberate on the comprehensive immigration reform bill by the middle of the year. “Before July 4th for sure,” he said.

Comprehensive immigration reform is one of the priorities of the current administration. Last January, Pres. Obama laid out his vision to overhaul the system, choosing Las Vegas as the place to announce his plan.

The president stressed the importance of strengthening border security and employment verification as well as overhauling the legal immigration system, including family-based petitions.