ON June 11, 2013, President Obama pushed the US Congress to send him a bill by fall providing for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), just as the full US Senate began to vote on the bipartisan Gang of Eight’s proposal introduced earlier this year. The Gang of Eight, including Senators Shumer, McCain, Durbin, Graham, Menendez, Rubio, Bennett and Flake initially introduced a mere blueprint for immigration reform as a starting point for legislative action, which has since been amended and edited to detail provisions for border security, relief for DREAMers and a means to obtain a Provisional Status for undocumented residents in the US.
In the Whitehouse, Obama said “Congress needs to act, and that moment is now, “ surrounded by immigration advocates, US civic, business and religious leaders, law enforcement officials and others. “There’s no reason Congress can’t get this done by the end of the summer,” said Obama. “There’s no good reason to play procedural games or engage in obstruction just to block the best chance we’ve had in years to address this problem in a way that’s fair to middle class families, business owners and legal immigrants.”
The Senate was set to vote Tuesday afternoon on a pair of procedural measures to officially allow debate to move forward on the CIR package. The measure would boost border security and workplace enforcement, create new visa categories for both high skilled and lower-skilled workers, and allow for a what has been almost universally misidentified as a “path to citizenship” for the 11 million immigrants in the country unlawfully, since the provisions under debate would allow only a Provisional Status with numerous hurdles for a successful applicant to overcome over a period of 13 years before US Citizenship could even be obtained.
While it is widely expected that the Senate will pass some version of the Gang of Eight’s CIR package, there is some concern as to how votes will come out as many Senators were preparing amendments on contentious issues including border security, back taxes and health care coverage. Key Republicans have intimated that they were seeking to strengthen enforcement provisions, which efforts have been labeled by Democrats as attempts to poison the bill by attacking bargained-for compromises in the bill.
Next up will be the US House of Representatives’ effort at CIR. Speaker of the House John Boehner has made his most positive comments to date on the issue, intimating that he believes there is a good chance that legislation can be signed into law “by the end of the year.” Progress from there remains uncertain, however, as the House is controlled by conservatives who are terming the 13-year “path to citizenship” as “amnesty,” to further the political firefight.
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Daniel P. Hanlon is a California State Bar Certified Specialist in Immigration and Nationality Law and a principal of Hanlon Law Group, PC, located at 225 S. Lake Ave., 11th Floor in Pasadena, California; Tel. No. (626) 585-8005. Hanlon Law Group, PC is a “full-service Immigration Law firm.” E-mail: [email protected] and www.hanlonlawgroup.com.
