Immigration Legislation
March 29th, 2006 . by Jilly
This week thousands of students walked out of class to protest the immigration laws that are being proposed right now. These protests were largely organized through My Space and went on in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. On Saturday, more than 500,000 marched in downtown Los Angeles.
George Bush has called for the opposing parties to meet and come to some sort of agreement on immigration legislation.
According to CNN here are the basic higlights of the major immigration proposals in Congress right now:
Senate Judiciary Committee’s bill:
• Allows illegal immigrants who were in the United States before 2004 to continuing working legally for six years if they pay a $1,000 fine and clear a criminal background check. They would become eligible for permanent residence upon paying another $1,000 fine, any back taxes and having learned English.• New immigrants would have to have temporary work visas. They also could earn legal permanent residence after six years.
• Adds up to 14,000 new Border Patrol agents by 2011 to the current force of 11,300 agents.
• Authorizes a “virtual wall” of unmanned vehicles, cameras and sensors to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Creates a special guest worker program for an estimated 1.5 million immigrant farm workers, who can also earn legal permanent residency.
• Allows illegal immigrant students with high school diplomas or GED, no criminal record and meet other criteria to enroll in college or university or enlist in the military. Permits state schools to charge such students in-state tuition.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s proposal:
• Requires all employers to verify the identity and immigration status of their employees through an electronic system.
• Assesses civil penalties of between $500 and $20,000 against employers for each illegal immigrant they hire and criminal penalties of up to $20,000 per illegal immigrant hired and up to six months in jail for engaging in a pattern of employing illegal workers.
• More than doubles the number of employment-based green cards, from 140,000 to 290,000, and makes more employment-based visas available to unskilled workers. It also would free up other visas by exempting immediate relatives of U.S. citizens from being counted in the annual pool of 480,000 visas, and increase country-by-country ceilings on family-sponsored and employment-based immigrants.
• Cancels visas of immigrants who have overstayed their visas and requires them to return to their home country to undergo additional screening at U.S. consulates.
• Makes it a misdemeanor crime for an immigrant to be in the country illegally.
• Increases the number of visas available for high-tech workers.
• Does not address President Bush’s proposal for a guest-worker program
It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out, living in southern California, knowing how many people would be affected by this new legislation. Whatever is decided, its gonna be a big deal.
true.
…misdemeanor crime for illegal stay in the country.
i thought felony had to do with serious criminal charges, not the sort that penalise some poor farmer from across the border who sweats it out every day attempting to scrape some meager dollars together from a one of the wealthiest nations..dollars that will be sent to his family whom he probably hasn’t seen for a few years. that racially biggotted law maker out there needs to be thrown into a swamp of nothing.
so much for the relaxation of borders theory.
…not to mention that all that farmer sweat is directly connected to this countries wealth. One might even bring up the old mining southwest. Some 60 years ago imigration was not only welcomed but encouraged, Mexican labor was used as far as it could be taken. The minute it became inconvinient then the immigrants were sucking this countries resources.