8 Points From The Senate Regarding the New Proposed Immigration Bill

On April 17, 2013, the bipartisan group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" introduced S. 744, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act." We commend the Senators for their work on the proposed bill. Below are eight initial points of interest taken from the bill's provisions.More analysis to follow in the upcoming weeks.

Just to barely scratch the surface, here are but a few things S.744 would do:

1. Legalization: Allow noncitizens who are unlawfully present and who entered the U.S. before December 31, 2011 to adjust status to that of Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI). Eligible applicants would be required to pay a penalty and back taxes. Individuals in RPI status would receive work authorization and may travel abroad. They would also become eligible to apply for LPR status after 10 years, and can apply for naturalization 3 years after acquiring a green card. Includes generous provisions for DREAMers and agricultural workers.

2. Family-Based Immigrants: Move the current FB-2A category (spouses and children of permanent residents) into the immediate relative classification, allow for derivatives of immediate relatives, eliminate the FB-4 category (brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens), cap the age of eligibility of married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens at 31, and bring back the V visa.

3. Employment-Based Immigrants: Exempt the following categories from the quota: EB-1 immigrants (priority workers), doctoral degree holders, physicians who have completed the foreign residency requirement, and derivatives. Add a new "EB-6" category for certain entrepreneurs.

4. Temporary Workers: Create a W-1 visa for lesser-skilled workers, a W-2 visa for aliens coming to the U.S. temporarily to perform agricultural services or labor under a written contract, and a W-3 visa for "at-will" workers with an offer of full-time employment in an agricultural occupation. The W-2 and W-3 visas would replace the current H-2A agricultural worker program.

5. Asylum: Eliminate the one-year filing deadline and authorize asylum officers to grant asylum during credible fear interviews.

6. E-Verify: Require all employers to be on the system after 5 years.

7. H-1Bs: Increase the quota to a floor of 110,000 and a ceiling of 180,000, increase the U.S. advanced degree exemption to 25,000 but limit it to STEM graduates, add a recruitment requirement for all H-1B labor condition applications involving a detailed posting on an Internet site designed by the Labor Department, add a non-displacement attestation, change the prevailing wage formula, provide employment authorizations for spouses, and add a 60-day grace period after an H-1B has been terminated from his or her job.

8. Fraud: Make it a crime to knowingly defraud an immigrant or hold oneself out as an attorney or BIA accredited representative when one is not authorized to do so. Require the identification of individuals who assist immigrants with the completion of forms and empower the Attorney General with injunctive authority to act against an unscrupulous "immigration service provider" at the federal level.