Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Let’s talk comprehensive immigration reform. Why is talk happening now? GOP has not only a Hispanic problem, they have an Asian problem. Senate faces the demographic reality while Gerry-mandered house is more insulated. Also with the economy looking slightly better than it has and undocumented immigrant flow to U.S. is at a net zero with just as many people coming in as leaving it provides a slightly less hostile environment.

Two plans Bipartisan plan and Obama plan. Really the same plan with a couple of minute differences. I haven't had time to read through the draft plan that was leaked to see what parts of his initial policy proposal or present/absent, so I can only speak about the initial proposal his office released after his remarks in Vegas. From what I understand the draft bill tracks his initial policy proposal.

Obama proposal had more specifics dedicated to cutting the already existing wait line for all family based immigration. Under our current plan visas are capped at max 7% per country per year. Obama wanted to expand to 14%. He also wanted to double the amount of visas. This would be a huge change as the wait time for high volume countries like China, Philippines, Mexico is enormous (e.g. Philippines brother and sister of US Citizen wait time ~24 years). If you quadruple the amount of available visas and hire the necessary staff to process you could cut that wait time by ¾.

So, we have the huge wait line for family based immigration. When people are referring to our broken system, this is one part of what most people consider to be broken. The other broken part is that we have no way to manage the undocumented immigrants already living among us - many of whom have no legal pathway to citizenship because they would not qualify for the pre-existing family based or employment based immigration avenues.

Both proposals offer a method to deal with our current population of undocumented immigrants. While they are mostly the same in that they would require undocumented immigrants to "get to the back of the line" and pay fines, do background checks, pay taxes, etc. The big difference between the two is the expected time frame. The bipartisan plan makes getting to the back of the long wait line contingent on us security our borders. The decision of whether our borders are secure would be a decision seemingly made by a to-exist in the future group of border governors, AGs, and border stakeholders. While this group mulled over whether to deem our border secure, undocumented immigrants present in the U.S. could get a probationary status which would give them work authorization. On the other hand, Obama’s plan makes getting to the back of the line available from the get go. With the recently leaked Obama plan draft, it would appear that he would create a new visa for "Lawful Prospective Immigrants" and that after 8 years with this visa people would be eligible to apply for a lawful permanent residence (green card).

Neither proposal seem to create a satisfactory way for dealing with the 3rd problem we face with our current immigration system - future immigrant flows. While the bipartisan plan seems to do slightly better in that the proposal would be to create a separate pathway in the future for all unskilled agricultural workers, such an approach would fall very short as it would still leave all other unskilled workers without recourse. Obama, in both his proposal and his draft bill offers nothing to address future flow other than cutting down wait times.

What would Clutchfans have us do?