REALLY Great Immigration News! You guys are gonna love this!

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read.p...SNWU00L3_UNEWS

The Obama administration plans a rule change to help reduce the time illegal immigrant spouses and children are separated from citizen relatives while they try to win legal status in the United States, a senior administration official said Thursday.

Currently, illegal immigrants must leave the country before they can ask the government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.

The official said the new rule would let children and spouses of citizens ask the government to decide on the waiver request before the illegal immigrant heads to his or her home country to apply for a visa. The illegal immigrants still must go home to finish the visa process to come back to the U.S., but getting the waiver ahead of time could reduce the time an illegal immigrant is out of the country.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposed policy change had not been made public.

The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make changes to immigration policy without congressional action. Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the administration for policy changes they describe as providing "backdoor amnesty" to illegal immigrants.

Immigrants who do not have criminal records and who have only violated immigration laws can win a waiver if they can prove that their absence would cause an "extreme hardship" for their citizen spouse or parent. The government received about 23,000 hardship applications in 2011 and more than 70 percent were approved, the official said.

Applications for the waiver can take as long as six months to be acted upon, the official said. The new rule is expected to reduce that processing time to just days or weeks, the official added.

"This would streamline the process (and) reduce the time of separation between family members," the official said.

The proposal will be published in the Federal Register on Friday. The official said the administration hopes to change the rule later this year.

I, for one, love when the president rules without congress. FUCK THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF NUTBAGS. Keep going Mr. President!

^^

The bad thing about this is that the next president--be 2012 or 2016--could void what he signed and we'd all be left hanging. Hope that doesn't happen.

The only problem

"The proposal will be published in the Federal Register on Friday. The official said the administration hopes to change the rule later this year. "

Meaning he is gonna drop the bomb right before the election. So if he loses, it will be in effect for all of two or three months.

What if the child is over 21 of a USC parent? You still have to show extreme hardship though. What does that include?

Extreme Hardship- lawyering bullshit. Basically you pay them and they write in some BS and if you get a good lawyer you get approved.

So that is still a huge risk. 'Extreme Hardship' is valid in the current immigration law also.

Also, if a child is over 21 and the parent is USC and the USC parent files for his/her child then does that mean he/she gets a visa available immediately or they have to wait years like in the current system?

No, if the child is a USC, then the parent is considered immediate family and can get their green card without waiting (well, like 6 months), BUT if the parents are USC and the child is over 21, he's not immediate family. I think it's F2 catagory...Better than F4 mind you but it'd still take a good 6 years.

Well he can sign an executive order while still in office if reelection doesn't seem likely.

Dude he is going to do an EO right after reelection. Nothing to worry bout.