Immigration Reform Updates
04 August 2013Author: New York Immigration Attorney Alena Shautsova
The Immigration Reform Bill "got stuck" in the House of Representative. Despite the optimistic predictions that we will have new Immigration laws prior to August, 2013, it did not happen. Why? The members of the House are divided between adopting one single Bill or multiple laws.
There are only nine legislative (“work”) days in September and Congress has several fiscal issues to address during that time. It means that the House likely will not vote on any immigration laws until October, 2013.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), is one of the members working on a comprehensive immigration bill, said he remains optimistic that the House will pass immigration reform. He told Fox News Latino there is too much momentum for a measure that both improves border security and provides a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants. “The support for immigration reform is too broad,” Gutierrez said. “Karl Rove supports it, Democratic strategists support it, evangelical and South Baptists both have joined to support it, the AFL-CIO and Chamber of Commerce both support it, and Cesar Chavez’s son and growers have reached an agreement on it.”
This gives us hope that the Immigration Reform Bill that everybody is awaiting will finally pass. However, it will not occur without help from different Human Rights and Immigration advocates groups, as well as U.S. citizens. More than 400 organizations— such as Google, Facebook, IBM, and Hilton— asked the House leaders to improve the nation’s immigration laws. In a letter to Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the groups representing the agriculture, housing, technology, and retail industries asked the congressional leaders to “not let this momentum slip and progress vanish” on immigration reform. “Failure to act is not an option. We can’t afford to be content and watch a generation-old immigration system work more and more against our overall national interest.”
For now and until the laws are passed, we all have to abide the existing regulations. Moreover, it is impossible to predict who will and who will not qualify for the Immigration reform because there is no one final draft of the regulations. Hopefully, Immigration Reform 2013 will not be just another “tease” by the government.