This may be the year Congress does something about the millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States. After years of gridlock, the "moment is now," says US President Barack Obama.
All eyes are on a 900-page Senate proposal with the you-said-a-mouthful title of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013.
The bill hurdled its first procedural vote, 82-15, on Tuesday to allow debate to begin.
What's in the bill? Is there a Plan B? And who are all these immigrants, once you get past the big round numbers?
A big dose of facts, figures and other information to help understand the current debate:
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Talk about "comprehensive immigration reform" generally centres on four main questions:
-What to do about the 11 million-plus immigrants who live in the US without legal permission;
How to tighten border security.
How to keep businesses from employing people who are in the US illegally.
How to improve the legal immigration system, now so convoluted that the adjective 'Byzantine' pops up all too frequently.
A group of four Democrats and four Republicans in the Senate ? the Gang of Eight ? crafted a bill to address all four questions. In a nutshell, this proposal would tighten border controls, allow more high- and low-skilled workers to legally immigrate, require employers to verify their workers have legal status, and create an opportunity for those who are in the US illegally to eventually become citizens.
Is there a Plan B? And C and D?
President Obama has his own backup plan in case con-gressional talks fail, but he's given his support to the Senate bill as a worthy compromise.
In the House, Republican Rep Bob Goodlatte, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, says his committee will tackle the main immigration issues one by one, instead of starting with a single sweeping bill.
Separately, there's a bi-partisan House group working on legislation.
Obama says he will keep an open mind about the various proposals, but the final deal has to address all the big issues.
COMING TO AMERICA
A record 40.4 million immigrants live in the US, representing 13 per cent of the population.
More than 18 million are naturalised citizens, 11 million are legal permanent or temporary residents, and more than 11 million are in the country without legal permission, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a private research organisation.
Those in the US illegally made up about 3.7 per cent of the US population in 2010. While overall immigration has steadily grown, the number of immigrants in the US illegally peaked at 12 million in 2007.
Twenty-nine per cent of the foreign-born in the US, or about 11.7 million people, came from Mexico. About 25 per cent came from South and East Asia, nine per cent from the Caribbean, eight per cent from Central America, seven per cent South America, four per cent the Middle East and the rest from elsewhere.
The figures are more lopsided for immigrants living in the US illegally - an estimated 58 per cent are from Mexico. The next closest figure is six per cent from El Salvador, says the government.
California has the largest share of the US immigrant population, 27 per cent, followed by New York, New Jersey, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii and Texas, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a private group focused on global immigration issues.
California also has the largest share of immigrants in the US illegally, at 25 per cent, followed by Texas with 16 per cent. Florida and New York each have six per cent, and Georgia has five per cent, according to the Homeland Security Department.
IS IT A CRIME?
Here's one way to think about the ways immigrants arrive in the US: Some come in the front door, others the side door and still others the back door, as laid out in a report from the private Population Reference Bureau.
Arriving through the front door: people legally sponsored by their families or employers. Also refugees and asylum-seekers, and immigrants who win visas in an annual 'diversity' lottery.
Side door arrivals: legal temporary arrivals, including those who get visas to visit, work or study. There are dozens of types of non-immigrant visas, available to people ranging from business visitors to foreign athletes and entertainers. Visitors from dozens of countries don't even need visas.
Back door entrants: Somewhat more than half of those in the US illegally have come in the back door, evading border controls, Pew estimates. The rest legally entered, but didn't leave when they were supposed to or otherwise violated terms of their visas.
Simply being in the United States in violation of immigration laws is not, by itself, a crime; it's a civil violation.
Entering the country without permission is a misdemeanour criminal offence. Re-entering the country without authorisation after being formally removed can be felony.
Pew estimates that fewer than half of immigrants who lack legal permission to live in the US didn't enter the country illegally. They overstayed their visas, worked without authorisation, dropped out of school or otherwise violated the conditions of their visas.
DEFINITIONS, PLEASE:
There are varying and strong opinions about how best to refer to the 11 million-plus people who are in the US without legal permission.
Illegal immigrants? Undocumented workers? Unauthorised population? Illegal aliens?
The last has generally fallen out of favour. Some immigrant advocates are pressing a "Drop the I-Word" campaign, arguing that it is dehumanising to refer to people as "illegal".
The term 'undocumented worker' often isn't accurate because many aren't workers, and some have documents from other countries. Homeland Security reports refer to "unauthorised immigrants", but the agency also reports statistics on "aliens apprehended".
Other terms to know include:
_Legal permanent residents (LPRs): people who have permission to live in the US permanently but aren't citizens. They're also known as "green card" holders. Most of them can apply for citizenship within five years of getting green cards. In 2011, 1.06 million people got the cards.
_Refugees and 'asylees': people who come to the US to avoid persecution in their home countries. What's the difference between the two terms? Refugees are people who apply for protective status before they get to the US. Those referred to by Homeland Security as "asylees" are people who apply upon arrival in the US or later.
Naturalisation: The process by which immigrants become US citizens.
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
There's a lot of talk about creating a "path to citizenship" for immigrants who are in the US without legal status.
But there's vigorous debate over what conditions these immigrants should have to satisfy to get citizenship ? among them are paying taxes, fines and fees, and passing background checks.
Some legislators want to set additional conditions, such as improvements in border security and in tracking whether legal immigrants leave the country when required. Others want to limit immigrants who are in the US illegally to some sort of legal status that stops short of citizenship.
But more than 60 per cent of Americans think those who are here illegally should have a way to become citizens, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in April.
The Senate bill would allow those in the country illegally to obtain "registered provisional immigrant" status six months after the bill was enacted if they met certain conditions.
Additional border security improvements would have to go into place before anyone obtained green cards or citizenship.
It would take undocumented immigrants at least 13 years to get all the way to citizenship. They would have to pay taxes, fees and US$2,000 in fines. No one who entered the country after December 31, 2011, or had a felony conviction or more than three misdemeanours would be eligible.
GETTING A REPRIEVE
While the larger immigration debate goes on, the government already is offering as many as 1.76 million immigrants who are in the country illegally a way to avoid deportation, at least for now.
Obama announced a programme in June that puts off deportation for many people brought here as children. Applicants for the reprieve must have arrived before they turned 16, be younger than 31 now, be high school graduates or in school, or have served in the military. They can't have a serious criminal record or pose a threat to public safety or national security.
Applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme are averaging more than 3,000 a day. By the end of April, more than 515,000 people had applied and more than 290,000 had been approved, with most of the rest still under consideration.
Applications have come from all 50 states, with the largest number coming from California and Texas. Nearly 75 per cent of the applicants are originally from Mexico.
TO NATURALISE OR NOT
Lots of US immigrants who are eligible to become naturalised citizens don't bother. As of 2010, about two-thirds of eligible immigrants had applied for citizenship, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
That lags behind the rate in other English-speaking countries such as Australia and Canada, which do more to promote naturalisation.
Why bother? Naturalisation offers all sorts of rights and benefits, including the right to vote and run for office. Naturalised citizens are protected from losing their residency rights and being deported if they get in legal trouble. They can bring family members into the US more quickly.
Certain government jobs and licensed professions require citizenship. Citizenship also symbolises full membership in US society.
In 2010, there was a 67 per cent earnings gap between naturalised citizens and non-citizen immigrants, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. Even after stripping out differences in education, language skills and work experience, naturalised citizens earned at least 5 percent more.
WORKERS AND EMPLOYERS
How do immigrants who are in the US without permission fit into the nation's jobs picture?
In 2010, about eight million were working in the US or trying to get work. They made up about 5 per cent of the labour force, according to Pew. Among US farm workers, about half are believed to be in the country illegally, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Business groups want a system to legally bring in both more highly skilled workers and more lower-skilled workers such as agricultural labourers. The idea is to hire more when Americans aren't available to fill jobs.
This has been a sticking point in past attempts at immigration overhaul. Labour groups want any such revamped system to provide worker protections and guard against displacing American workers. Current temporary worker programmes are cumbersome and outdated.
The Senate bill would improve the agriculture worker visa system, create a new visa program for lower-skilled workers outside of agriculture, and allow many more high-skilled workers into the country.
Farm workers already here illegally would be able to qualify for green cards after five years if they'd already worked in agriculture in the US for two years and if they kept working in the industry.
Current law requires employers to have their workers fill out a form that declares them authorised to work in the US. Then the employer needs to verify that the worker's identifying documents look real.
But the law allows lots of different documents, and many of them are easy to counterfeit.
The government has developed a mostly voluntary employment verification system called E-Verify, which has gradually got better. But, so far, just 10 per cent of employers are using it, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The system is now required in varying degrees by 19 states.
The Senate proposal would require all employers to implement it within four years.
FAMILIES VS JOBS
A big question in the immigration debate centres on how much priority to give to the family members of US citizens and permanent residents.
Under current law, the US awards a much larger proportion of green cards to family members than to foreigners with job prospects here.
About two-thirds of permanent legal immigration to the US is family-based, compared with about 15 per cent that is employment-based, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The rest is largely humanitarian.
Some policymakers think employment-based immigration should be boosted to help the economy. Advocates for families want to make sure any such action doesn't come at the expense of people seeking to join relatives in the US.
The Senate plan would prevent citizens from bringing in siblings and would allow them to sponsor married sons and daughters only if the children were under 31.
It would raise the cap on visas for high-skilled workers, create a start-up visa for foreign entrepreneurs, and set up a new merit visa that would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the US and other factors.
- AP
Source: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130614/business/business94.html
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