FAR REACHING AMNESTY LEGISLATION INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS


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This week Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced a bill that would
essentially grant an amnesty to many undocumented immigrants in the US.
H.R. 500, titled the U.S. Employee, Family Unity, and Legalization Act (the
USEFUL Act), it would make a number of important changes to US immigration
law.

First, it would change the registry date from the current January 1, 1972 to
February 6, 1996.  The registry is a program that essentially grants amnesty
to people in the US who have been in this country since before a specified
date.  It would also provide for updates of the registry date in the future
so that in 2003 the date would be 1997, in 2004, 1998, in 2005, 1999, in
2006, 2000, and in 2007, 2001.  It would make the information provided in an
application for registry confidential so that it could not be used for
enforcement, and would provide a penalty of up to five years in prison for
making false claims on a registry application.

The law would eliminate the retroactive application of new grounds for
deportation when the offense occurred before it was a reason for deportation
and would apply this same standard to grounds of inadmissibility.

It would amend the definition of aggravated felony to require sentences of
five years for crimes of violence, theft offenses, and several other
offenses.  It would also require that for other offenses to be considered
aggravated felonies a sentence of at least one year actually be imposed and
not simply be a possibility.  The law would redefine conviction so that
convictions that are expunged or otherwise removed from a person’s record
cannot be the basis for deportation.

The law would eliminate the three and ten-year bars on readmission that
currently apply to people who have failed to maintain valid immigration
status in the US.

It would amend the recently created V visa to allow spouses and children of
permanent residents to enter the US to achieve family unity immediately.
The current V visa provisions require that an immigrant visa application be
pending for three years.

Many of the changes have been sought by immigration advocates since 1996,
when the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was
passed.  Bills to make similar changes have been introduced in the past, but
seldom even received a hearing in the Immigration Subcommittee chaired by
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX).  Immigration experts doubt this bill will be passed
into law, but believe it will be taken more seriously by the new chair of
the Subcommittee, Rep. George Gekas (R-PA.


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