News Update - June 9, 2007S. 1348, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation, In TroubleIn the face of strong Republican conservative desire to continue
adding countless amendments and extend debate on S. 1348, Senate
majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) moved to cut off debate on June
7th, but was unsuccessful in obtaining the required 60 votes. The
vote for cloture was 45-50. The bill was then pulled from the Senate
floor. Prospects for the bill's future appear to rest with President
Bush and his power to gather support from his party to save the
bill. Recent amendments have made the bill less attractive to pro-immigration
forces as the Senate has voted to end the "Y" guest worker
program after five years, to deny the earned income-tax credit to
"Y" and "Z" visa holders until they adjust to
permanent residence (currently projected to be 8-13 years), to prohibit
Social Security benefits based on earnings from unauthorized work,
to provide for minimum sentences from 2-10 years for aliens who
reenter the U.S. after removal, and to give law enforcement and
intelligence agencies access to certain information in "Z"
visa applications for investigations of criminal or civil violations. † 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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Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee,
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