Immigration Bill - Revived for Now
WASHINGTON - The Senate killed a Republican proposal today requiring ALL adult illegal immigrants to return home temporarily if they want to qualify for permanent lawful status in the U.S.
The Senate also killed a Democratic bid to only confer legal status to those who have been in the U.S. for four or more years.
The vote was 53-45 to stall an amendment by Senator Hutchison (R- Texas), to require that illegal immigrants go home within two years in order to qualify for a renewable Z visa to live and work legally in the United States.
The bill could grant status to as many as 12 million illegal immigrants and now requires only heads of household seeking U.S. status to return to their home country to apply for green cards.
The Senate also killed a proposal by Senator Webb (D- Virginia), to allow only those who had been in the country for at least four years to gain lawful status. The bill would make illegal aliens physically present in the U.S. by Jan. 1, 2007 eligible for legalization.
The revived immigration measure would toughen border security and institute a new system for turfing illegal immigrants from U.S. workplaces.
Conservatives call the measure too lenient, but liberals say it will separate families and subject guest workers to abject exploitation.
A test vote on the entire bill S 1639 is set for Thursday.
1 Comments:
At 11:53 AM , Naveen said...
Speaking of the US, the argument that immigrants are necessary sometimes to do particular jobs to keep the economy going is an argument that one hears quite often. I feel that the corrective path has to come from the embassies of the US government. For. E.g the jobs for which shortages are foreseen and hence immigrants required may be displayed in the embassy websites, and proper information shared with prospective applicants so that they don’t find the need to approach touts for getting into the US under false pretexts or worse still undetected and unobserved.
I recently came across a blog which has done an excellent SWOT analysis of this issue. You can find it at: http://old-things.blogspot.com.
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