News Update - May 17, 2007

By Alan Lee, Esq.

Senate Negotiators Set To Make Announcement on Agreement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Newspapers are reporting that Senate leaders and the White House are poised to make an announcement that an agreement has been reached in the Senate negotiations on a comprehensive immigration reform legislation package. The American Immigration Lawyers Association reports today that elements of the bargain will include elimination of many of the family based relative categories including F-1 (single adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens), F-2B (single adult sons and daughters of permanent residents), F-3 (married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens), and F-4 (brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens); that the employment based system is to be replaced by a merit based point system; that there will be no extra green card numbers; and that there will be no path to permanent residence for many new guest workers under a new "Y" guest worker program. The Senate is to begin debate on comprehensive immigration reform on Monday. Stay tuned.

 


The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

This article © 2007 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

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