Details Emerge: House Immigration Bill Is Said to Offer 3 Paths

Under the shadow of the visible Senate CIR 'Gang of 8,' reportedly the House CIR group of 8 has developed a very interesting proposal for the CIR component of "legalization of undocumented immigrants." Reportedly, the proposal lays out three different groups with different legalization relief:
Group I: DREAMers & Low-Skilled Farm Workers: Expedited road to legal status in order not to punish those who were brought illegally to the country by their parents, and agricultural workers who are desperately needed in the American farm industry to put the meals on your dining tables, which has been strongly backed by the labor union community.

Group II: Undocumented immigrants with a family or an employment relationship that would allow them to apply for legal status but for their EWI (Entry Without Inspection) by crossing the borders and subject to 3-year bar or 10-year bar. Reportedly, this group may receive the relief of waiver of unlawful presence which is more or less similar to the current provisional waiver of unlawful presence, I-601K relief. This relief will require them to apply for either family-based or employment-based immigrant visa at the American consulate in their home countries with the relief of waiver of 3-year or 10-year bar from unlawful presence in the United States. There appears to be one string attached to this relief, to wit, that they should complete a series of hurdles including paying fines and back taxes and learning English,

Group III: The rest of other undocumented immigrants: They will be given a “provisional legal status” if they come out of the closet, pay fines and back taxes, and learned English.. The provisional legal status would allow them to live, work and travel in the country legally, but they will have to apply for permanent resident status through regular immigration process after 10 years and apply for naturalization in 5 years after they obtain the permanent resident status, just like any other legal immigrants. Obviously, this proposal requires them to stay in the long line of regular legal immigration seekers on first come and first out basis.
This proposal appears to be a workable compromise between the Republican party and the Democratic party from the perspectives of this reporter's earlier proposal to reach a compromise to share power in a balanced way by way of Republicans being assured of the Group III's being unable to attain citizenship with voting power for the next 15 years or longer and at the same time, Democrats being given an opportunity to expand their constituency base from the legalized undocumented immigrants through naturalization, albeit longer than 15 years in the future. Because of the existing backlogs in the immigrant visa numbers, it may take not just for 15 years but many and many years. You guessed it! Very interesting! We support the House version of legalization relief for the CIR in that it is a "realistic" political compromise with achievement of balance of powers between the two parties, at least for more than two decades.

http://immigration-law.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/us...hape.html?_r=0

I think I like the house bill better

We don't even know the full details of the senate bill yet, though.

Anyways.

The relief waiver for number two sounds great. And when they use the term "DREAMers," I hope this means that our "expedited" road will be similar or more loose than the previous iteration of the DREAM Act.

Fingers crossed for retro benefits to people who have completed a college degree already if that is one of the requirements with an age gap barring potential eligibility. My heart goes out to aged-out dreamers.

Hope to see more details soon from both house and senate.

Why exactly?

What is retro. I keep seeing that word.

Case: Jimmy was 21 in 2000 when the DREAM Act was introduced. Having read that in order to fully take advantage of the bill he would need to complete x years in college, he decided to go back to school. The age cap on the DREAM Act at this time is say, 35.

2013 rolls around. Jimmy is now 34. Unfort, it seems the age cap on the DREAM Act has been reduced to 30. He is no longer eligible. However, since Jimmy completed or surpassed the college requirement retroactively (prior to bill passing while still meeting all other requirements), he is still eligible for the DREAM Act.

hope that helps.

What do you guys think the new age cap for DREAM Act will be? I understand we should wait for the bill to come out first, but out of curiosity what do you guys think it will be now that republicans are also helping draft the bill?

I think that Republicans will want to lower the age cap down to 25 years of age. I hope not, but i am just speculating.

It depends on who is doing the negotiating.I suspect if Republicans had their way it would be military only and under 21 years of age,but if it is a Republican negotiating it could be anywhere between 25-30 I think.I still think we should wait and see the text before jumping to conclusions and do believe that Vargas might have had an impact on the age issue.

Lets hope so. Either way, I think they'll just use DACA as precedent for the decision.

I'm hoping that Group 1 is without an age cap.

The description so far for that group seems kinda generalized, but saying "brought to the country when young" and then revealing an age cap of like 21 or 25 will have the bill making fun of itself.