As the leaders of the U.S. Senate release the long-awaited, bipartisan immigration reform bill, Cornell University immigration experts are available to discuss the varied implications of this landmark legislation:
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a leading authority on U.S. immigration and asylum law and professor of law at Cornell University Law School.
Yale-Loehr says:
“The introduction of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate today is just the first step in a long legislative fight. The devil is in the details. The legislative language will anger both sides in the immigration debate.
“For example, the Senate bill would eliminate green cards reserved for foreign siblings of U.S. citizens and married children over 30 years of age. Proponents of family immigration will be up in arms over this cut. A similar proposal in 1989 met a quick death in the Senate.
“Similarly, the cost of the bill – $4.5 billion just to increase border security – could derail the bill, given the nation’s budget woes.
“With Republicans still controlling the House and Democrats controlling the Senate, the path to comprehensive immigration reform is just as hard as ever. If you thought getting health care reform through Congress was tough, immigration reform will be even tougher.”
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Michael Jones-Correa, professor of government and author of several books on immigration, including, “Latino lives in America: Making it Home.”
Jones-Correa says:
“The ambitious proposed immigration bill being unveiled this week in the Senate is a dramatic departure from the immigration system that the U.S. has had in place over the last half-century.
“In particular, it represents a significant shift from the emphasis on family reunification of the current system, it expands and formalizes a temporary agricultural and low-wage worker program on a scale last seen with the Bracero program that ended in 1962, and it proposes – with few details – an expanded biometric employer verification system, with possible implications for civil liberties.
“It is also significant what the bill does not do.
“While it offers a pathway to citizenship for those who arrived before 2011, it does not provide an ordered way of normalizing people’s status going forward. Without this, the U.S. may well be debating undocumented immigration again within the decade.”
NOTE: Jones-Correa welcomes interviews in Spanish.
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