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 News from Around the Americas | March 2007 
US Lawmakers Launch Immigration Overhaul Bid
 Donna Smith - Reuters
| | Guatemalan cleaner Gilma Gomez, 31, gestures at the television screen as she video-conferences from Los Angeles with her family who live in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. A growing number of Hispanic immigrants in the United States are staying in touch through video-conferencing technology developed for use in the corporate world. (Reuters/Mario Anzuoni) |
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers launched another push for overhauling U.S. immigration laws on Thursday, introducing a bill to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens.
The legislation in the House of Representatives would combine tough border security and workplace enforcement measures with other programs that the authors said will end the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.
"Rather than ... targeting Windex-wielding cleaning ladies, or wasting millions of dollars on failed strategies of the past, our bill offers real solutions," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat.
The bill would create a new conditional nonimmigrant status for millions of illegal immigrants, with a visa that would let them work and live in the country while they seek permanent status and eventual citizenship.
In an effort to head off opposition from some conservative Republicans and others who said similar legislation last year was an amnesty that rewarded illegal behavior, sponsors pointed to requirements such as paying fines, taxes and learning English.
The bill would require illegal immigrants to exit the United States and re-enter legally during their conditional status period. That provision drew fire from at least one group that said it was impractical to force millions of people to do that.
"Any provision that requires 12 million immigrants to return home before adjusting their status is bad policy," Eliseo Medina, Service Employees International Union Executive vice president, said in a statement.
More than half of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are Mexicans, where the issue has become as important a political and humanitarian issue as in the United States. The House last year passed and Bush signed legislation to build 700 miles of fence along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Comprehensive immigration reform failed last year in the face of stiff opposition from a group of House Republicans opposed to giving legal status to those who entered the country illegally. But with Democrats now in control of Congress and President George W. Bush backing an overhaul of the existing laws, the bill's sponsors see a good chance of enacting legislation this year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the bill "a significant step forward."
The House bill also would create a new guest worker program to help meet future labor needs of U.S. businesses and provide a path for those workers to become permanent residents and eventually citizens. |
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