Waiting half a life for a green card: Families languish in immigration line

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Sergio Garcia poses for a portrait in Chico, Calif., on April 2. Though he earned a law degree and has passed the state bar exam, Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, is not allowed by the state to practice law. He's spent most of his life trying to gain citizenship.

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For Sergio Garcia, the magic number is 25. That's how many years he will have waited for his green card if, as he estimates, he gets it in 2019.

Garcia, 36, is one of millions of immigrants seeking a green card, or legal permanent residency in the U.S., which he has called home for most of his life. His dad, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, sponsored him, and he was approved to begin the naturalization process in 1995 at age 17.

But like many other applicants, Garcia has to wait for a green card to become available since quotas limit the number given out annually. Authorities first told him it would take three to five years to reach his “priority date” – when he could start the five-year process of getting a green card.

“I was crying about that. I’m like … how am I going to survive five years without my documents?” he recalled recently from Durham, a community outside Chico, Calif. “Little did I know that almost 19 years later I would still be in the same shape. … You’re approved but just wait around … half of your life.”

Aspiring citizens like Garcia face decades-long waits, ever-changing laws and an unwieldy bureaucracy that leads applicants on an epic odyssey to the “American dream.”

As Congress prepares to unveil its long-awaited immigration reform, many would-be immigrants are hoping it provides a viable legal way for them to join their families in the U.S., with reasonable wait times they feel will discourage unlawful immigration.

Why is it so important to become a U.S. citizen? At recent swearing in ceremonies in Los Angeles, we asked our newest citizens that question.

The U.S. immigration system was refashioned in the mid-1960s to focus on family unification, though critics say it has hardly lived up to that ideal.

Now, applications for family-sponsored green cards represent the vast majority of requests for legal permanent U.S. residency: 4.3 million of the roughly 4.4 million applications on the waiting list as of November came from parents, adult/minor children, adult siblings or married couples, according to the State Department.

The previous national-origins-based system  was “very discriminatory” in prioritizing Europeans over Asians and Latin Americans, said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

Immigration Waiting List Chart List 

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In a bid to provide an even-handed approach, limits were placed on how many family-sponsored and employment-based visas could be issued to immigrants from a single country. Today, that ceiling stands at 7 percent of the total. (There is an exception for spouses, minor children and parents of U.S. citizens, who go to the head of the line.)

But lengthy lines built up for countries with high numbers of applicants, such as Mexico, the Philippines, India and China, said Meissner, now head of the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. immigration policy program.

“It’s become increasingly clear that this is just really a perverse set of outcomes that the people who thought about the ’65 act and passed it … wouldn’t have contemplated,” Meissner said. “To make family reunification be meaningful and make it be real, you just can’t have people waiting 20 years. I mean you shouldn’t even have spouses and children waiting two or three years.”

'Overpromising and under-delivering'
Some advocates of stricter immigration controls think these lines shouldn’t exist at all, saying family-sponsored green cards should only go to the minor children and spouses of U.S. citizens.

The waiting list “creates a political pressure for advocacy groups to demand higher caps,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. “… They point to it and they say, ‘Look, this is unjust and we have to speed family immigration.’ It’s become a talking point.”

There is “no good answer” to cases like Garcia’s, he added.

“That’s the kind of thing that happens when you have a bad immigration policy that is jury-rigged and complicated and opaque,” he said. “The goal needs to be to define as clearly as possibly who gets in and then let everybody who qualifies in every year … and make clear that if you are the brother of a U.S. citizen there is no category for you, there is no line, so don’t get in it. The problem is overpromising and under-delivering.”

Garcia's story is in many ways typical of undocumented immigrant residents treading the family path to a green card, lawyers and experts say. His father had a green card but was not yet a U.S. citizen when he applied for his son, putting Garcia in a lower-priority category even though he was under 21 – the age when minor children become adults under U.S. immigration rules.

His dad became a citizen in 1999, which would have put Garcia on the fast track as the child of a U.S. citizen had he not turned 21 the previous year. Instead, he entered another line: unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens. Immigration is today handling those cases from Mexico dating to Aug. 1, 1993.

Waiting Time by VISA CATEGORY USA Greencard Visa

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That may appear close to Garcia’s priority date of Nov. 18, 1994, but don’t be fooled, he said. The line crawls forward about one week a month, he said, “and sometimes it jumps back real fast and by a lot.”

In the meantime, Garcia said, he has lost college financial aid and job offers because he is undocumented. He said he would have probably returned to Mexico if he had known it would take so long.

“It’s probably been a month or two since I last ended up crying because sometimes this life does get to you,” he said. “It’s not living, it’s just surviving.”

Even for those on a seemingly smoother path, such as a foreigner marrying a U.S. citizen, the family route still can take years.

Married ... with complications
Jeanette Smith, a former immigration lawyer in Miami who once guided couples through the system, is at the next step in the process as she tries to win citizenship for her husband, Agustin Gonzalez, a Panamanian national: providing documentation and going through interviews with immigration officials.

Applicants have to provide a dossier that includes the results of a medical exam, an affidavit of support from the relative sponsor saying the applicant has sufficient means of financial support and is unlikely to become a public charge, and any military, court and prison records, plus original documents establishing family ties between the sponsor and the applicant.

Many applicants must do interviews with U.S. consular or embassy officials in their home country.

Married in 2009, Smith and Gonzalez, 41, have had two interviews with immigration officials and have submitted documents such as wills, powers of attorney and three years of joint tax returns.

John Moore / Getty Images

After migrating to the U.S. as minors, children take their oath of allegiance to become citizens.

The couple provided a wedding album, and affidavits from friends and co-workers attesting to their relationship, too.

But Gonzalez, who first came to the U.S. on a guest worker visa that expired, remains undocumented. Since the couple was married less than two years during their first immigration interview in 2009, he could only get a conditional green card that expired in January while they were awaiting the second interview, said Smith, 47, executive director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice.

It leaves Smith feeling scared that her husband could be deported, although judges can exercise discretion.

The immigration officer “has the ability to make a decision on whether my marriage is valid or not,” Smith said. “Who else in this world has the ability to do that other than the couple themselves?”

Though Smith knows she has more experience that helps her navigate the system, she said: “It’s difficult, I don’t think people realize it  …  People think that it’s some automatic process, and all your problems are solved. And it’s not.”

Some who make it through the process can still in the end be denied a green card for dozens of different reasons, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University School of Law.

“This is an amazing story in people’s resilience at some level and it continues to show you how much appeal the U.S. green card still holds, that people are willing to put their lives on hold for prolonged periods of time,” he said.

Max Whittaker / Prime for NBC News

Sergio Garcia helps Alma Garcia obtain a legal work permit at his office in Chico, Calif., on April 2.

Garcia has forged ahead despite the barriers. He graduated college and law school, and is leading a landmark case in California that could set a national precedent on whether undocumented immigrants can receive law licenses. In the meantime, he works as an independent legal aide.

He ultimately believes the wait will have been worth it.

“I still think this country is a great country and I think it will give me, in the end, a better future than I could have had in Mexico,” he said. “… I tell people my purpose in life at this point is to prove that the American dream is still alive and well.”

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New questions loom as EB-5 visa program explodes

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service sanctions the EB-5 visa program, which is intended to help spark job creation. As long as 10 jobs can be created or saved within two years of a $500,000 investment, a green card will be rewarded. (AP Photo)

William Patrick

Watchdog.org

The Washington Examiner

TALLAHASSEE — Washington’s EB-5 visa program is big business in Florida. A few years ago, four regional centers in the state were soliciting foreign investor money in exchange for U.S. citizenship.
More than two dozen are now. Proponents say it’s been good for the state’s economy, but critics charge it’s nothing more than selling green cards.
With genuine results of the EB-5 program difficult to determine, questions loom about the jobs created and the apparent loss of investors’ money.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service sanctions the EB-5 visa program, which was designed to spur job creation. As long as 10 jobs can be created or saved within two years of a $500,000 investment, a green card will be rewarded.
The jobs can be created directly or indirectly by the investment and, oftentimes, multiple foreign investors are associated with individual projects.
The seemingly low job threshold has had the recent effect of lining up green-card seekers to pay big money, as business developers have expanded their courtship of foreigners as a way to secure cheap financing.
Florida Watchdog contacted the USCIS to ask about job creation data and success rates of EB-5 projects, but the agency’s press secretary, Christopher Bentley, told us the USCIS “does not track business ventures to see if they’ve been successful.”
At the direction of Bentley, Florida Watchdog then contacted the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the agency responsible for designating EB-5 investment areas within the state.
DEO’s press secretary, Jessica Sims, confirmed the agency does not keep job-creation statistics, information regarding immigrant investor residency or data showing whether foreign investor funds are recouped.
An analysis of information provided by the USCIS regarding I-526 and I-829 forms, however, shows that of the 7,871 alien entrepreneur applications accepted over the past four years, only 2,424 were ultimately approved for permanent residency.
In other words, 7,871 immigrant investors paid $500,000 to $1 million depending on the project, and 2,424 actually received green cards. Additionally, far fewer jobs were created than expected, according to the data.
USCIS keeps no records as to whether foreign investor funds are returned after their petitions for residency are denied, nor does the agency monitor employment data after two years of accepting an EB-5 application.
Mohammed Shaikh, an Orlando-based certified fraud examiner with extensive EB-5 experience, has openly questioned the efficacy of the visa program. Shaikh raised concerns with Florida Watchdog about the state’s regional centers’ practice of soliciting cash abroad for risky domestic investments as potentially conflicting with U.S. securities laws.
“U.S. investors would never invest in many of Florida’s regional center ventures; that’s why they seek foreign cash,” said Shaikh.
The low number of green cards issued and subsequent jobs created is particularly troubling when considering that EB-5 investors can receive credit for positive employment results, even when other domestic investors contribute to the overall financing of a project.
Florida Watchdog asked Bentley whether the cheap EB-5 financing makes it easier to build businesses and create jobs, or if the funding simply alleviates risk for the developer.
Bentley declined to answer but instead explained that, “in order to qualify for the program, the individual investor must put their $500,000 to $1 million fully at risk.”
The EB-5 investor can move to the United States on a two-year temporary visa, along with their spouse and children, once the initial visa application and investment money is accepted.
If the associated business venture fails to produce the necessary jobs, the onus to deport falls on the immigrant investor. USCIS keeps no data pertaining to self-deportation or instances in which individuals may have stayed past the terms of their temporary visa.
President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness called for the EB-5 program to be “radically” expanded to generate at least 40,000 jobs a year.
William Patrick is a reporter with Florida Watchdog.org, which is affiliated with the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

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Will you earn enough 'points' to win new US green card?

WASHINGTON: For years, millions of immigrant applicants hoped they would be lucky enough to win the US green card lottery. Under reform being considered in Congress, they may soon be asking: "Am I skilled enough?"
By 2017, according to a proposed revamp of laws governing admission to the United States, permanent residency permits known as green cards could be doled out not on luck but "on merit," via a points system that would put more qualified applicants at the front of the line.

Are you a French computer scientist with a strong command of English, already living in the United States on a visa but whose employer is reluctant to sponsor you for permanent residency? The new system may work in your favor.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but an 844-page measure, the most comprehensive immigration reform in a generation, is working its way through the Senate, and members of the House say they, too, are hopeful a bill can be signed into law this year.

Ten criteria for immigrant applicants will be taken into account in the system, which has a theoretical maximum of 100 points.

Under the new system, a university degree will be worth five points, a master's degree 10 and a doctorate 15.

Each year of work experience will provide an applicant from zero to three points, depending on the employment level, for a maximum of 20 points.

Are you a programmer, computer scientist, or software developer? 10 points.

If your job is in an occupation related to your degree: 8-10 points.

A TOEFL English language proficiency score of 80 or more? Chalk up another 10.

Contractors who employ at least two people: 10 points.

Clearly, skills and experience count under the proposed system -- but so does youth. Those age 25 and under will receive eight points; 25-32 year old are awarded six points; and age 33-37 years, four.

Those age 38 or above receive no bonus.

A sibling of a US citizen earns 10 points, as does the married child, 31 or older, of a US citizen.

Community service will help. Those who can prove their "civic involvement" will be allocated five points.

A final clause gives five points to those from countries with low immigration, which rules out Mexicans, Chinese and Indians.

Unlike other countries that have adopted the points scheme, including Britain and Canada, the exact bar for immigration admission under the proposed US system remains a mystery: other factors are also at play. But if your score is among the top 60,000, you will gain a green card.

Another block of 60,000 will also be awarded permanent residency based on criteria that favor lower-skilled labor such as construction.

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It’s easier to apply for greencard than Obamacare

April 4, 2013, 12:15 p.m. EDT

Application for new health exchanges includes 61 pages of instructions

Yuri Arcurs / Shutterstock.com

If you thought nothing could be more tedious than filling out your tax forms, just wait until you try to apply for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s new exchanges.

The draft of the paper application is 15 to 21 pages, depending on whether someone is applying individually or for their family. See the Application for Health Insurance

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And the instructions for the application run no less than 61 pages. That’s nearly six times longer than the instructions for a green-card application. (There are alsovideos of the process.)

“If you like IRS forms, you’re going to love this one,” says Ken Hoagland, chairman of Restore America’s Voice, a conservative organization that advocates for the repeal of the health-care law. “These are the kinds of things that are going to drive people crazy.”

Adding to the confusion from this new bureaucracy is that experts say most Americans are still largely in the dark about what the health-insurance exchanges — the new marketplaces for individual insurance stipulated by the health-reform law — even are. Though government officials are hurrying to set them up before open enrollment for 2014 begins this fall, a survey released today by InsuranceQuotes.com found that 90% of U.S. consumers don’t know that the exchanges open Oct. 1, and 22% said they thought the exchanges were already open now.

That lack of knowledge doesn’t bode well for how consumers will actually manage to sign up for insurance on their own, experts say — something they will have to do or else pay a penalty mandated by the health-reform law.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently released the draft versions of the applications consumers will need to fill out in order to get insurance if they can’t get it through their employer or family. But while the point behind the law and the exchanges is to make it easier for Americans to get health insurance, some consumers are complaining that a major barrier now stands in their way: too much paperwork.

“It’s a lot of information that consumers are going to have to provide, and that could deter people from signing up,” says Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, part of Bankrate.com, which tracks interest rates. “That could be an issue for some people who don’t like paperwork. And who likes paperwork?”

The forms bring to mind the IRS instructions for filing the 1040 tax form, which is 105 pages long. In fact, many of the questions have less to do with health matters than financial ones.

A little-known government disclosure requirement offers a clue, at least, to how much time it will take consumers to fill out the forms. To comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Health Department had to submit an “Information Collection Request” along with the draft forms, detailing why it is seeking the information and an estimate for how long it will take the public to provide. The online application will take 15 to 30 minutes to complete depending on whether consumers are applying for additional government subsidies, according to theICR.

Meanwhile, the paper application will take 20 to 45 minutes to finish. (By comparison, the department estimated that applications through the small-business health-plan exchanges, known as SHOP, will only take about 10 to 13 minutes to complete.)

But experts say those time estimates don’t include the many hours of homework consumers will have to do before they will even be equipped to fill out the forms, like gather proof of their income. “Consumers are going to need to be prepared,” Adams says.

Government officials and all kinds of other organizations are now parsing the exchange applications and sending feedback to the Health Department on how to make the forms clearer if not idiot-proof. The Massachusetts Medicaid office, for example, suggested in a letter in February that the phrase “please print” be added to the paper form, “so the written information will be as legible as possible.”

And members of the House Ways and Means committee complained that the forms included too many gratuitous questions, asking about applicants’ voter registration status. “As if the insurance application process will not be complicated enough, HHS’s proposed application includes an inquiry about something totally unrelated to health insurance,” wrote Louisiana Republican Rep. Charles Boustany in a letter last week to the Department.

While the health reform law also provides for a support staff known as “Navigators” to help consumers sign up for insurance in the exchanges, experts worry that the Navigators will be overwhelmed with requests, and consumers who call their inundated phone lines will be stuck on hold for a while. “People won’t be able to get through,” Adams says. (Yesterday, HHS proposed training and ethics regulations for the Navigators, which don’t include specific provisions about answering phones in a timely fashion, but dictate that Navigators “will be fair and impartial and will be appropriately trained, and that they will provide services and information in a manner that is accessible.”)

Adams recommends that consumers start the application process right away when the exchanges open in October, because as 2014 approaches, the deadline for when all Americans must have health insurance, the rush of last-minute applicants may bring the enrollment websites crashing down. “Our fear is that people are going to put it off til New Year’s Eve, and by then the sites will be overloaded and Navigators will be overloaded,” Adams says.

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US Issues 1 Million Green Cards, Naturalizes 757,000 in 2012

March 23, 2013

Nearly a million people became U.S. citizens last year, and just over a million became legal permanent residents, according to new data released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The data shows the numbers of new “green card” holders and naturalizations, the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, have been fairly steady over the past few years, with a modest bump in naturalizations last year.

​Claire Bergeron, a researcher with the Migration Policy Institute, attributes that increase to the 2012 presidential election.

“There were a lot of outreach efforts leading up to the presidential election to get people to naturalize. A lot of the big ones we saw this year were Latino organizations,” she said.

Latino voters, including many new citizens, helped secure President Barack Obama’s re-election and increased the power of his Democratic Party in Congress.

A total of 757,434 people naturalized in 2012, up from 694,193 the year before. The majority of new citizens were born in Mexico, the Philippines, India, the Dominican Republic and China, according to the data released Friday.

Naturalizations increased the most among people born in the Dominican Republic and Cuba between 2011 and 2012.

Vietnam, South Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria and Somalia were among the top 20 countries of origin.

Immigration policy experts say the 2012 data is fairly unremarkable, except that it may be a point of reference as immigration trends change in future years if Congress passes immigration reform.

Growing numbers of lawmakers are calling for a path to citizenship for the estimated 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. But what type of path, and how long it would take is the subject of intense debate, with new pitches flying through Washington each week.

Last year, the U.S. granted “green cards” to 1,031,631 foreigners. That lets them live and work permanently anywhere in the U.S. and opens the door to citizenship within five years.

Mexico, China and India were the leading countries of birth of America’s newest legal permanent residents. People born in Iraq, Burma, Bangladesh and Ethiopia were among the top 20.

The majority of the green card holders already lived in the U.S. when their status changed. Nearly 66 percent were granted permanent resident status based on a family relationship with a U.S. citizen or another green card holder.

The system to determine who gets a green card is a complicated process, with preference going to family members and foreigners with needed job skills or who came from countries not well represented in the U.S.

Some immigration reformers are suggesting a new green card category be created for the undocumented immigrants in the U.S., while others object to what they consider to be an “amnesty” for people who broke the law.

Erwin DeLeon, an immigration specialist with the Washington-based research group the Urban Institute, says he expects new data trends will emerge in about a decade because of the work Congress is doing now.

If Congress passes immigration reform this year or next, he says, “by 2020 you’ll see a big spike” in permanent residents and new citizens.

Bergeron isn’t so sure about the timing, however, since some proposals are suggesting unauthorized immigrants would have to wait as long as 10 years to become legal, with an additional five-year wait to naturalize.

Persons Naturalized by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2012:

2012 2011 2010

Num. % Num. % Num. %

REGION Total 757,434 100 694,193 100 619,913 100

Africa 74,775 9.9 69,738 10 64,022 10.3

Asia 257,035 33.9 249,940 36 251,598 40.6

Europe 82,714 10.9 82,209 11.8 78,011 12.6

North America 261,673 34.5 217,750 31.4 163,836 26.4

Caribbean 109,762 14.5 79,820 11.5 62,483 10.1

Central America 40,592 5.4 33,784 4.9 25,706 4.1

Other North America 111,319 14.7 104,146 15 75,647 12.2

Oceania 3,886 0.5 3,734 0.5 3,646 0.6

South America 76,992 10.2 70,485 10.2 58,474 9.4

Unknown 359 — 337 — 326 0.1

COUNTRY Total 757,434 100 694,193 100 619,913 100

Mexico 102,181 13.5 94,783 13.7 67,062 10.8

Philippines 44,958 5.9 42,520 6.1 35,465 5.7

India 42,928 5.7 45,985 6.6 61,142 9.9

Dominican Republic 33,351 4.4 20,508 3 15,451 2.5

China, People's Republic 31,868 4.2 32,864 4.7 33,969 5.5

Cuba 31,244 4.1 21,071 3 14,050 2.3

Colombia 23,972 3.2 22,693 3.3 18,417 3

Vietnam 23,490 3.1 20,922 3 19,313 3.1

Haiti 19,114 2.5 14,191 2 12,291 2

El Salvador 16,685 2.2 13,834 2 10,343 1.7

Jamaica 15,531 2.1 14,591 2.1 12,070 1.9

Korea, South 13,790 1.8 12,664 1.8 11,170 1.8

Peru 11,814 1.6 10,266 1.5 8,551 1.4

Pakistan 11,150 1.5 10,655 1.5 11,601 1.9

Brazil 9,884 1.3 10,251 1.5 8,867 1.4

Iran 9,627 1.3 9,286 1.3 9,337 1.5

Ukraine 9,459 1.2 8,489 1.2 7,345 1.2

Nigeria 9,322 1.2 9,344 1.3 9,126 1.5

Somalia 9,286 1.2 7,971 1.1 5,728 0.9

United Kingdom 9,145 1.2 9,246 1.3 8,401 1.4

All other countries 278,635 36.8 262,059 37.8 240,214 38.7

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Figure rounds to 0.0. Countries ranked by 2012 persons naturalized. Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, N-400 naturalization data for persons aged 18 and over, Fiscal Years 2010 to 2012.

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Senators agree on how to offer legal status to illegal immigrants - latimes.com

Senators agree on path to legal status for illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON — Eight senators who have spent weeks trying to write a bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration laws have privately agreed on the most contentious part of the draft — how to offer legal status to the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants.
According to aides familiar with the closed-door negotiations, the bill would require illegal immigrants to register with Homeland Security Department authorities, file federal income taxes for their time in America and pay a still-to-be-determined fine. They also must have a clean law enforcement record.
Once granted probationary legal status, immigrants would be allowed to work but would be barred from receiving federal public benefits, including food stamps, family cash assistance, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.
RELATED: Is the border secure?
The group's current draft is largely in line with President Obama's call to set a pathway to earned citizenship as part of a broader immigration reform package, as well as with recent efforts by prominent Republican lawmakers to resolve an issue that hurt GOP candidates in November's election.
Though the draft is a long way from becoming law, immigration advocates expressed guarded optimism about a possible breakthrough.
"Nine months ago, people would have thought you were nuts to say that four Republicans and four Democrats were working on a way to legalize 11 million people," said Angela Kelley, an immigration expert at the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the White House. "It's a Rubik's Cube, but more sides are matching in color than ever before. That's significant."
Still undecided is how long illegal immigrants would need to wait before they could apply for permanent resident status and eventually become citizens. The delay for a green card probably would be 10 years or longer, the aides said.
Also unresolved are such politically charged topics as how many visas to issue to high-tech specialists and other guest workers; how to keep track of when visitors leave the country; and how to pay for more Border Patrol officers, fencing and other security measures in an era of shrinking budgets, the aides said.
The eight senators met Tuesday and Wednesday, alternating between a private office in the Russell Senate Office Building and a marble-floored ceremonial room off the Senate chamber.
The group had hoped to deliver a completed bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration before the Senate leaves for Easter recess on March 22. But aides said remaining issues required more technical advice and cost estimates that could delay delivery until early April.
The group includes Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Grahamof South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona. The Democrats are Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado.
The draft bill will be several hundred pages long when finished. For now, the unfinished pieces are peppered throughout the draft.
"We're working through them. I'm not sure we'll get them all done," McCain said in an interview. "Some of these issues are very controversial."
Business groups and Silicon Valley companies have pushed for more H1B visas for software engineers and other high-skilled employees, for example, while labor unions have warned that too many immigrants would undercut qualified Americans seeking high-tech jobs in a weak economy.
Unless the group designs a visa program that ensures a robust labor force, Rubio told reporters, "What you're going to have is people coming into the country illegally or overstaying visas."
Immigration overhaul bills floated in 2006 and 2007 were sunk by disagreements between labor and business leaders over how many workers to allow into the country. Some senators are skeptical that the current group can find a solution.
"The country can absorb only so much low-skilled labor without significantly impacting the prospects of working Americans to get jobs and get higher pay," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the judiciary panel who has been critical of previous efforts to expand the visa program.
In an effort to resolve the issue, negotiators from the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have worked with Senate staffers to set a formula so the number of visas for both high-tech and low-skilled workers can fluctuate. They have agreed that the tally would move up or down based on job demand, unemployment rates and other data.
"We're really trying to fill in the details," said Ana Avendano, an AFL-CIO negotiator.

Page 2 of 2

The two sides have agreed that a work visa need not be tied to a specific employer and that foreign workers would be allowed to change jobs. Unions want assurances that foreign workers have the same rights as Americans to report mistreatment to the Labor Department and to sue employers for unpaid wages.
Unlike in the past, both business and organized labor want an immigration bill to pass, said Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 2 million workers.
"No one wants to be responsible for deep-sixing the effort," Medina said.
Negotiators also have hit a roadblock on whether the government should keep track of who is leaving the country and how to do so.
Under current law, U.S. immigration authorities do not keep a record when tourists and other foreign visitors leave the country. So the government doesn't know whether they have overstayed their visas, as thousands do each year.
The Senate group has tentatively agreed to create a system to check visas against an immigration database at international airports and seaports but have not determined whether it is feasible at much busier border crossings. The task is potentially huge: U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada are the most highly trafficked in the world, with 250 million crossings each year.
Some lawmakers warn that checking visas as people leave the country would be expensive to implement, further clog busy border crossings and slow crucial commerce.
Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law, said the real legislative battle over immigration would come after the bill was made public.
"We haven't even begun to see the opposition to the bill," Chishti said. "Because there isn't meat on the bone."

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U.S. Struggles to Nab Visitors Who Overstay

WASHINGTON—A long-standing problem in immigration enforcement—identifying foreigners who fail to go home when their visas expire—is emerging as a key question as senators and President Barack Obama chart an overhaul of immigration law.

The Senate is discussing an overhaul that would require the government to track foreigners who overstay their visas. The problem is the U.S. currently doesn't have a reliable system for doing this.

Talk of illegal immigration often conjures images of people sneaking across the U.S. border from Mexico, but an estimated 40% or more of those now illegally in the U.S. entered with a valid visa.A group of Democratic and Republican senators say that a better visa-tracking system should be in place and that there should be improved U.S. border security before any of the estimated 11 million people now in the U.S. illegally can apply for citizenship under proposed new laws. Mr. Obama wants no such precondition before illegal foreigners can apply for citizenship.

Congress moved to tighten the system after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Foreigners now get their fingerprints taken when they enter the country. A similar biometric system to track exits also was mandated. But it proved costly and tricky to set up, and it wasn't put in place. Among other things, airports have no obvious place to do the checks.

Now, as the Senate tackles immigration overhaul, the visa-overstay challenge is gaining new attention. "We need a visa-tracking system,'' Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), a member of the bipartisan group, told talk show host Rush Limbaugh. "We don't track people when they leave. We only track them when they come in." He added that he wouldn't support a bill unless "enforcement mechanisms are in place."

The Senate group aims to introduce a bill by March and hopes to begin moving it through the legislative process this spring. President Obama has said he would propose his own immigration legislation if progress stalls, though White House officials say they are pleased with the pace so far.

Mr. Obama's potential legislation would allow all people in the country illegally to qualify for a "Lawful Prospective Immigrant" visa right away if they passed a criminal-background check, submitted biometric information and paid fees, according to a person familiar with the bill.

After eight years, people with provisional status could qualify for a green card—legal permanent residence—if they learned English and U.S. history and paid back taxes, under Mr. Obama's approach. That would allow them to apply for citizenship after a further five years. The green cards would be available earlier if the government clears the backlog of people waiting legally before eight years pass. Details of the president's draft legislation were reported earlier by USA Today.

Nobody is sure how many people are in the U.S. on expired visas. The most commonly cited figures equate to some four million to five million people. But that is based on a 2006 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, which relied on a formula that was created using 1990 data.

In 2011, there were 159 million nonimmigrant visits to the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security. More than three-quarters were for pleasure. But millions also involved business travelers, temporary workers and students.

A handful of other countries have established systems for monitoring visa overstays, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies immigration issues.

The institute singles out Australia as having a particularly effective system. Information is collected and electronically recorded for all visitors entering Australia, and then checked again on the spot as people depart. People who have overstayed their visas are flagged for a secondary inspection upon departure. The institute also points to Japan, which implemented an entry-exit system in 2007 that includes fingerprinting visitors.

The Senate legislation under discussion wouldn't create any additional enforcement program to track down people who overstayed visas, Senate aides in both parties said. Still, they said it is important to understand the scope of the problem, and that tougher employment-verification systems contemplated by the legislation would deter future visitors from overstaying their visas.

The Department of Homeland Security says it is on its way to creating a tracking system, though it isn't clear if it will satisfy the senators working on immigration overhaul.

The department is no longer focused on implementing a biometric system, one relying on fingerprints or other unique personal markers, to make sure someone leaving the country is the same person who entered on a particular visa. Instead, the department has begun comparing lists of people with expired visas with lists of foreigners who depart through airports and seaports.

However, the department has no current way of tracking foreigners who leave by land. And officials said the department still can't say how many people are in the country on an expired visa.

Another problem is that some of the people who haven't left the country have found legal means of staying—such as getting employment or student visas, or gaining refugee status. Officials said they are working to integrate all these databases now.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that her department should be able to report the rate of visa overstays by the end of the year.

A biometric system that included measures like fingerprints, she said, would be "extraordinarily expensive."

The department tested three possible biometric checkpoints in pilot programs, and all had problems. The first checked travelers when they got their boarding passes. But airlines balked at that additional responsibility, and officials concluded it would be easy for travelers to "check out" at the counter and then simply leave the airport.

A second option was processing people at the security checkpoint. But that diverted officers' attention from their prime responsibilities, and slowed the lines, officials said. Plus, travelers could still leave the airport after going through security.

The final option was to do the checks in or near the jetways to capture people just before boarding.

But it was difficult to find space at the gates, a senior homeland security official said, and airlines again balked at any additional responsibilities, arguing that this is a government function.

source: wallstreetjournal

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