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We can call it whatever we want - Fact is if immigration reform gets chopped up then nothing will pass. I have philosophical differences with Q but I think he is right. Only one bill will be passed (if any).Quote:
Originally Posted by Turbulent_Dragonfly
Choice is a watered down version that doesn't satisfy all immigrant groups OR status quo for next 10 years.
Question is what democrats can pass using budget reconciliation process. Can they pass legalization of DACA + Covid frontline workers with 51 votes? I read articles that they are exploring options.Quote:
Originally Posted by bookworm
No matter what, republicans will try to offset number of greencards given to this population somewhere else - mostly family based categories and diversity lottery which democrats will not agree, so getting 60 votes is out of question.
I hope whatever bill is drafted has country quota removal embedded. Since this is not going thru UC this time, it wont need too many carveouts etc.
H4-EAD Revoke has been withdrawn by Biden admin.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=128849
Congrats everyone.
This is good news. It shows either DJT admin was incompetent who could not kill rule in 4 years or they never intended to remove it and this was all a show to charge up the base during election time.Quote:
Originally Posted by srimurthy
Murthy.com says (29Jan2021):
The confirmation vote has been pushed to Tuesday because of the snow storm. The last time Pres. BO tried to modernize the system and we all know what happened. I am not hoping for bread loafs, but even breadcrumbs will do for us.Quote:
President Biden is expected to sign an executive order (EO) on Tuesday, February 2, 2021 to modernize the U.S. immigration system. No further details on the forthcoming executive order have been provided.
The President had been scheduled to sign this EO today, but delayed it until after the Senate?s confirmation vote for Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Biden?s nominee for the Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Mayorkas is expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Monday evening.
There may be some hope for us after Mayorkos takes over. According to CNN:
Looks like USCIS is in a honeymoon period after the election. Hoping for things to speedup.Quote:
"You can tell that we are in a semi-holding pattern at the very top until Mr. Mayorkas is confirmed as Secretary and starts giving more clear public direction and more specific leadership effort," one department official said.
The 1.9T bill is certainly going ahead. Dems are going to use the reconciliation bill that is exempt from filibuster.
Anybody knows if immigration is part of the reconciliation bill?
Not as far as I'm aware.Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
They cannot include immigration measures in reconciliation bill as it will violate Byrd rule. Even the $15 minimum wage raise is iffy. See the quote from The Hill :Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
Quote:
Once authorizing committees draw up legislation based on the budget?s reconciliation instructions, Republicans will have another change to challenge aspects of the bill for so-called Byrd Rule violations.
The rule stipulates that the fast-track process cannot be used for issues that do not directly affect deficits, among other things. Democrats have recently argued that their inclusion of a $15 minimum wage bill should comply given its effects on welfare spending, but the Senate Parliamentarian will have the final say.
David Bier summary of Immigration Bill (US Citizenship Act):
https://twitter.com/David_J_Bier/sta...41643760160769
Tweet captures (he has copied and pasted text in his tweets, so some context will be realized only by going to his tweet thread):
Increases the family-sponsored cap from the FB floor of 226,000 to the cap of 480,000 by ending the requirement to deduct immediate relatives from the cap.
It also increases the EB cap, though not by nearly as much, from 140K to 170K and recaptures the 225K unused EB green cards since 1992. That would help with backlog reduction, but not dramatically. Demand would still far exceed supply
It removes from the FB cap the F2A category for spouses and minor children of LPRs by classifying them as immediate relatives, freeing up almost 90K additional green cards for family members of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
This is only the outline text. But I don't see anything in here that would preclude all backlogged legal immigrants in the US from qualifying for the pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, farm workers, and others.
Biden bill will end EB country caps and increase family based country caps to 20%. There's a typo that says that EB would go to 20%, but they are clearly repealed later.
Spouses and children of H-1B workers could receive employment authorization and most children would be protected from aging out while the petition is pending.
This is nearly as important as the V visa for family-sponsored applicants. Guaranteeing that students on OPT don't lose their status makes the H1B cap far less important. That's huge!
A permanent end to endless wait times! Max wait time will be 10 years. It won't matter much for EB since all of those cases will disappear under the path to citizenship, but it will help many family-sponsored cases.
Exempting STEM PhDs is nice, but all this provision would do, if the cap is binding, is force immigrants to unnecessarily get PhDs. What's the point of that? Just make it a master's degree.
Flexible EB cap, yay, but wait... they can only *lower* the cap. No authority to *increase* it during times of low unemployment. Very bad. And it plays into the protectionist nonsense that Biden rejected just last year when he denounced the visa bans. Skilled workers create jobs!
Big oversights:
1) No exemption for derivatives of legal immigrants. The derivatives gobble up half the cap and will take half of it for FB now that F2A is uncapped. That was in some early reports about the Biden plan, who would oppose it?
2) Nothing improves the process at all for seasonal agricultural or nonagricultural workers on H-2A or H-2B outside of the Pacific territories. These programs are the main way for employment-based migration by lower-skilled workers.
3) This is the only provision for year-round lower-skilled workers. Employers already don't use all the EB green cards b/c the permanent labor certification process is horrible and far too expensive when you're hiring someone for $12.50/hour. Year-round work visas are needed.
Another positive: The diversity lottery would increase by 25,000. Why not more?
Overall, if the final text holds, the pathway to citizenship would benefit both illegal AND legal immigrants, clearing away the EB backlog. The V Visa changes and other FB reforms means that the FB backlog will not be a major issue going forward
Despite Biden saying he supports seasonal workers, there's no H-2B cap relief. There's no H-2A streamlining. There's nothing at all for year-round temporary workers. That's a big loss and a sign that they won't make it bipartisan.
Here is another tweet summary from Doug Rand:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...708249090.html
Just an outstanding piece of article on how immigration is a strategic imperative for US, how EB immigration needs to increase, how trump has hurt overall immigration and economic security of US, how the politics is shaping the debate now and where it needs to focus.
By far the most comprehensive and excellent excellent grasp of the subject by the author - without any bias.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/23/polit...omy/index.html
Dont you think article is biased? I did not know Ali Noorani is expert of social net @.Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
This is my 2 cents - idea is to balance ones contributions over working life against what they need to consume during retirement years. System should never be based on working people feeding benefits of elderly because you will need way more working people when these working people retire and apart from immigration lawyers whose lives run on that, everyone else can understand that is not viable option.
There is no talk about how will you stop another millions of undocumented from coming in. I read that this month, number of southern border crossings increased by 3 times.
There is no talk about changing family based immigration. Which country alllows people to immigrate just because they are brother/sisters or parents of citizens (who themselves are immigrants in most cases)?
Your point about social security's sustainability is true. But the author is not suggesting that immigration is a permanent fix. He is merely suggesting that immigration is a remedy. I do agree it is a temporary remedy. The real remedy is fiscal discipline. But America has forgotten fiscal discipline after Reagan declared "Deficits don't matter". But we digress.
The article is not really political in nature and that's why border control is not discussed and should not be discussed. He is simply stating that immigration in any form is good economics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
Control healthcare costs. No country should spend 18% of GDP on healthcare, 2nd costly country spends about 10% of GDP, that should take care of lot of problems this country is facing.Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
And what about telling people to live within their means? Enough of taking money from someone else / your own future to spend in present. I paid off a car loan and my credit score went down, i am like which morons designed this system when you get penalized for paying your debt before time @.
Healthcare is a huge problem. A friend of mine worked for a healthcare company - his travel budget was more than most 6 figure salaries. Money flows in healthcare like water. Bigger than in technology. The car loan thing is funny but true. I have experienced that first hand. I have to say that I am fiscally conservative but socially liberal. And when those two worlds collide I am fiscally liberal too. In other words I agree with living within means but I see government as a force for good - like TDR and FDR saw it.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
I see house is planning to vote DACA/TPS and farm workers bill this month. I hope they add original version of country quota removal bill to the list and send all 3 to senate. Since this will go thru committee in senate, it would not need so many carve outs like last time. It would be interesting to see who will be democrat champion of country quota removal in senate this time.
Dream Act passed 228-197 in the House. 9 Republicans joined with all Democrats to pass it and send it to the Senate. In the absence of any country cap removal Bills having been introduced this session, this might be the Bill to rally around as it offers protection to legal DreamersQuote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
Looking at recent comments by Graham and other republican senators, it seems they want to make border issue a huge weakness of Biden and charge up their base, so i doubt 10 repubs will agree to move that bill in senate in near future.Quote:
Originally Posted by gs1968
If I were involved in advocacy I would have made an effort to tag EB children onto this bill.Quote:
Originally Posted by gs1968
That would be non-controvertial, and in line with this bill's goals.
One has to be realistic and keep making progress inch by inch. Country caps will go when they will go but this to me has a real chance and if we can solve desi people's children's aging out problem, why not. Generally speaking - anybody who has this as a problem - I encourage you to organize and do something to add such provision in HR6 2021-2022.
First of all, I doubt all the 50 Dem senators will agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
I dont blame republicans. Sorry to say but dems have no plan on how they will stop another 11 Million from crossing the border, period.Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmys
Just because Biden says dont come now, they wont stop coming. There are hundreds of millions of people in world who wants to come to USA at any cost, and if they are lucky to cross the border and if govt follows "catch and release", those people just need to be lucky once.
I thought its already tagged. Am I missing anything here? Remember seeing a mention of it in one of Greg Siskind's tweet.Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
This is the classic fox news anti-immigrant phobic narrative that I can never subscribe to. Laws are important and I think ppl. should come in lawfully no questions about that but the narrative should be a bit more balanced here. Those very same republicans are against all forms of immigration also, period.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
If so - my bad. I must have missed it. That would be terrific!Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenzone
I just skimmed the bill - HERE IS THE LINK - there is no explicit reference to EB children aging out. However the language may be generic enough to include them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenzone
Others on the forum might be able to better decipher this and tell if this includes EB children too. If it does - your children will be eligible to get a conditional GC independent of your GC!
This is where you read between the lines. The core republican strategy is to waste time water down the bill and even then they will not vote for it. The same happened with stimulus, it was brought down from $2000 to $1400 there were stricter income limits and yet no one voted for it (What happened to GOP superstars like Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio who were for 2000 stimulus). Their argument $1.9 was to high and state and local budget was the sticking point. When you read the breakdown State and local was 85 billion of the total bill and more than 50% of the republican voters support the bill. One more example democrats offered money for border wall to DT in return for protection for Dreamers and guess what DT turned it down. Dems are not that great either but I will have to defend them a bit here as in this particular instance they are on the right side of the issue. I can guarantee you one thing, even if democrats gave everything republicans want in terms of border security there won't be any votes (10 votes definitely not) on this bill.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
It is in the very first paragraph of the BillQuote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary or the Attorney General shall adjust to the status of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence on a conditional basis, or without the conditional basis as provided in section 104(c)(2), an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States, is subject to a grant of Deferred Enforced Departure, has temporary protected status under section 244 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1254a), or is the son or daughter of an alien admitted as a nonimmigrant under subparagraphs (E)(i), (E)(ii), (H)(i)(b), or (L) of section 101(a)(15) of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)) if—
TBH it is not clear how any of this will be implemented and was a line that was added at the last minute before introduction to meet the April 1 deadline and show some progress. I think their hope is that the Senate will review it and come up with clearer guidelines. I also think that one of the reasons Rep.Lofgren has not introduced an HR 1044 equivalent is because one of her main motivations to doing so (based on her floor speeches) is to help aging out children and this Bill does that
I suspected this but honestly I have not checked the language. Too greek for me. But if you think it does address it then that's really a good news.Quote:
Originally Posted by gs1968
Zoe Lofgren is THE original champion of country cap removal. CCR was the original intent - aging out children was additional benefit. So I am sure, she will pick it up after HR6 is successful - which I think it should.
Let's keep politics aside, but what is plan to create disincentive for new undocumented to come to USA. USA will not be able to absorb all those who wants to come here, we all know that. There is no try to create simple and effective e-verify system and punish employers who knowingly hire undocumented. Unless they remove that incentive, this migration will continue for decades.Quote:
Originally Posted by vsivarama
Immigration bill discussion you were talking about, democrats also increased eligible population from 1 Milloin to 4 Million and it was also one of the reasons those negotiations failed (infact both sides wanted those negotiations to fail). Same with 1.9 T, when DJT offered that thru Mnuchin, dems rejected it because they did not want Trump to get benefit of that in election.
Some of your points are valid but if you have two pick b/w lesser of two evils the verdict is pretty clear here (at least for me!).Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
alpha - don't get caught into legal illegal immigrant discussion. If money can move legally everywhere then so should people be. That's how I think and that's what I profess. Think about it.
I have lived in southwest too and I can tell you first hand that Arizona Texas California were all Mexican territories, until one fine day US declared unilaterally that it belongs to US. So many people including white people don't see this quite as much legal vs illegal issue.
I absolutely love your post and thinking and looks like you and I have a lot of common ground here. I am for mandatory e-verify for the businesses. Why do you want to create an incentive to break the law for anyone. Especially when legal immigrants are waiting for decades even after doing everything by the rule of law and undocumented folks do not have any harder pathway to citizenship. In fact it might be easier. But here is where the politics come in as you cannot separate politics from the immigration issue or else you would have had some reform a decade or so back. R's say they want mandatory e-verify, but in fact if they get that included a lot of their donors get affected and so as an insurance premium they want to make it harder for folks to seek asylum and may even add extra provisions for family based immigration just to make it a non starter. Their fear is, if D's agreed to e-verify R's donor base will stop funding them. But here is the kicker, even if D's hypothetically agree (which they will not) to all their demands let me tell you how many R's will vote in favor. Less than 10! That's the politics side of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
Again a very fair and good point. I did not agree with NP as I felt she played games during the negotiations. Guess what, the voters took notice and now they have a smaller majority in the house. There could still be a case if you wanted to make one, you could say that Ds wanted 3.2T which they then cut it to 2.4T which was further cut down to 1.9T and so they bailed. You and I know that the reason they did not pass was because D's did not want DJT to get the credit before an election. It would have been savvier to pass the bill and let it fail in senate as Mitch was against it. What also makes it different from the current scenario is that the opposition party was fighting (even if it were for optics) to give more relief to the American people while the party in power did not care even though it was in their best interest. Now the optics are different as the R's come across as the party that would rather want the American people to suffer than make JB look good. So the R's took it on themselves to obstruct JB but in the process going against their own constituents to vote down the bill. There was lots of hero worship how R's were all in for $2000 check that DJT proposed. But now that they have been caught flat footed they wanted to bail out on flimsiest of reasons. Long story short, when both sides want the negotiations to fail, I want to support the side that's on the right side of history as per my analysis. This time I know D's are serious and not playing games because they are passing piecemeal legislations instead of trying for comprehensive reform.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
Q,Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
Politics aside, I am coming around to appreciate this point of view more and more. People come to this country legally or illegally against all odds for the better future for their families. As long as they work hard and contribute to this country, they should have the right to live with dignity. Only immigrants (legal or illegal) who should be thrown away are the people who commit crimes and are menace to the society.
Long time back, while growing up in India as a child, I used to notice a peculiar behavior of stray dogs in my lane vs. some nearby lane. They had their territories fixed. They would bark at each other and fight if any dog tried to get into territory of others. We as human beings can definitely do better than that. Of course, good immigration and border security policies are required, but some people will always sneak in no matter how strict the policies are. So, once they are here and have contributed to the society by their hard work, they should be allowed to settle down. That's my two cents!
I don't think money can enter without the permission of destination country. I can understand your analogy in h1b visas but there also as i wrote earlier, if India forces apple to source 75% of items locally so what is wrong if US force Indian IT shops to hire x% locally.Quote:
Originally Posted by qesehmk
There are 400+ Million people in South America and 130 or so Million in Mexico, question is how do you restrict them from coming to USA in your approach. Would you allow all of them to enter USA if they wish?
I am originally a student of physics - particularly fond of astrophysics. So i have a rather lofty view of how lonely place earth is for all human beings in this entire universe. It just feels very artificial to me that humans can't move across borders easily but money moves so easily. I see immigration and related challenges as a change management problem. I think people should be able to move and prosper everywhere and that the world should open its doors just a bit every day. I know this is too much of an idealistic view. But it is not utopian. If we don't open the world for people, the problems will find their way into advanced societies anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha0
But coming back to Rep vs Dem reality, the rhetoric by GOP is generally a theater. The total number of illegal immigrants coming to US between 1990 and 2007 is only about 9M. That's 300K per year!! US can very easily absorb and in fact will welcome such levels of immigration. Immigration is a major economic imperative and it only helps US. GOP is only engaged in hate and racism. Trump has clearly said he welcomes white immigration (norway) but not otherwise.
To answer you questions about a country requiring to hire or produce local - I think that would be entirely within that country's right. And that absolutely does not negate the benefits of immigration. So yes a country can do that and yet US can easily absorb 300K illegals every year.
The house has passed H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021. This bill allows DACA as well as H1B workers' children path to Green Card as well as citizenship. This has a fair chance in the senate. Do send letters your senators asking for passage of this bill.
Does it need 60 votes in Senate?
It needs 51 votes to pass. But if a senator tried to filibuster it (i.e. tries to go into an infinite loop of discussion thereby blocking a bill), then the senate needs 60 votes to break the filibuster. It remains to be a seen what GOP senators do. Dems are obviously on board.Quote:
Originally Posted by cancer24
Durbin says he is getting close to getting a vote on DREAM. In other words, there may be enough votes on GOP side to break filibuster.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/21/polit...ntv/index.html
This is great news although the article content seems less certain than the headlineQuote:
Originally Posted by whereismygc