New Senate Framework for Immigration Reform: First Look at What’s Inside

America's Voice Blog

Posted 04/30/10 at 09:13am

Glasses Last night, Senators Reid, Schumer, Durbin, Feinstein and Menendez held a press conference to announce their framework for moving forward with a comprehensive immigration reform proposal. At the press conference, the senators outlined their ideas for reform and invited Republicans to come to the table and work with them to advance a legislative proposal this year.

The proposal appears to be a good start to what we hope will be a serious process, leading to the enactment of comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year that resolves the status of 12 million unauthorized immigrants, reunites families, and restores the rule of law to our immigration system. The American Immigration Lawyers Association just released a thorough, six page analysis of the framework which you can find here.

Most importantly, there seems to be confusion about the framework's legalization program. Press reports suggest that unauthorized immigrants would be stuck in some sort of undefined legal limbo until stipulated border security measures are met, or that a substantial chunk of the undocumented population would not qualify.

In fact, these immigrants would be able to obtain temporary legal status as soon as the program is enacted, but they would not be able to “adjust status” to Legal Permanent Residency or a green card (the second phase of the process) until some of the border security and family immigration provisions are implemented. They would be afforded work authorization, travel permission, and protection from deportation in the meantime, but the proposal estimates that it will take eight years for them to be able to apply for green cards. In addition, the outline states that the senators’ goal is to “encourage maximum participation in the legalization program” by creating a process that is both “broad” and “streamlined” – addressing concerns with previous legalization proposals, whose complicated procedures and eligibility rules excluded more immigrants.

The pros:

The framework describes a plan to immediately register undocumented immigrants and establishes a temporary immigration status so that they can work legally, pay taxes, travel abroad, and no longer live in fear of deportation. Eligible immigrants and temporary protected status (TPS) holders will be considered for the first step of the legalization program, an interim “Lawful Prospective Immigrant” (LPI) status, as soon as the program is up and running. After eight years, these immigrants can apply for green cards and get on a path to full U.S. citizenship.
DREAM Act is included.
AgJOBS is included.
Permanent partners immigration provisions included.
On family-based immigration: family immigration backlog would be cleared in eight years. Spouses and children of Legal Permanent Residents are moved to “immediate relative” immigration category, reducing their waiting period to enter the U.S. now and in the future
Increased labor protections and remedies, as well as a commission to determine future employment-based visa numbers based on labor market needs.

On the other hand, the framework also includes some provisions that many advocates for comprehensive immigration reform are not going to like, particularly in the enforcement sections. Senator Menendez said as much at yesterday’s press conference. Some of the “zero tolerance” language governing future deportation rules raises red flags, given our past experience with immigration laws like those passed in 1996. Legal experts are dissecting the outline now, and we look forward to their review of the detention and deportation provisions in the coming days.

Senate Democrats said that they included these provisions to show Republicans they are making a good faith effort to invite them to the table. At tonight’s press conference, Senator Schumer described this proposal as being more thorough than the framework for border security recently laid out by Republican Senators McCain and Kyl. The fact is, the McCain-Kyl proposal will always be incomplete unless it deals with the status of undocumented workers the way the Democrats’ proposal does—something Senator McCain used to know, but seems to have forgotten.

All in all, the Senate Democrats’ proposal looks to be a strong, centrist invitation to Republicans to work together, produce a bipartisan bill, and advance a common sense solution to our broken immigration system. There are provisions we embrace wholeheartedly and provisions that should be improved. But we are pleased that Senate Democratic leaders are finally leaning into the issue and have come up with a plan that Republicans can and should embrace. It’s now on the Republicans and the White House to decide if they want to step up, or try to punt on the issue for another legislative year.

As Congressman Gutierrez said in a statement yesterday evening:

In the Senate, as in the House, the Democrats will provide 90 percent of the votes for immigration reform and we will need 10 percent of the votes to come from the other side of the aisle. Whatever happens, we need the President to step up his effort to move legislation forward and we need his full court press to get a result. For myself, I know I am going to keep the pressure up on the White House, on the Leadership in my Party, and on the Members across the aisle.

Meanwhile Arizona burns, the country grows increasingly frustrated with Washington’s failure to act, and immigrants and Latinos continue to organize, mobilize, and demand the change they voted for in 2008. If there was ever a time to move swiftly on comprehensive immigration reform, that time is most certainly now.