FAR REACHING AMNESTY LEGISLATION INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------