What Is the New Immigration Bill ?
| Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005 (CIERA) or the New Immigration Bill has been introduced in the U.S Senate with the objective of reforming the existing United States immigration law. |
Apart from addressing issues concerned with border security and international visa regulations, this new immigration bill has also got provisions for regularizing the citizenship of 12million illegal immigrants residing in United States.
As per the existing immigration laws, only 19 million people can migrate to the U.S. over the next few years. With the introduction of the CIERA immigration bill, around 103 million people would be permitted to legally migrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years.
Immigration status of immigrants in United States is of three types, including temporary, convertible and legal permanent residence (LPR). The most important feature of CIERA is that there is no provision for temporary. All those having temporary immigration status can have their status modified to convertible under this law. Convertible or non-permanent immigration status provides the opportunity to get converted to legal permanent residence status after residing in the U.S. for few years. Once the immigrants with LPR have completed five years in U.S, they can become naturalized citizens of U.S.
Some of the benefits provided to immigrants in convertible and LPR status under CIERA include right to bring spouses and minor children into the country, granting LPR status to spouses and children along with the primary immigrant and right to bring parents into the country with LPR status once citizenship is granted to the primary immigrant. A new temporary guest program (H2-C) created under CIERA provides skilled foreign workers with the opportunity to enter U.S as guest workers. While there is no cap on the number of non-immediate relatives attaining LPR status under CEIRA, there is a provision to increase the number of employment-based green cards to 450,000.
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