President Biden seeking to do a major overhaul of immigration policies has sent and immigration bill to Congress that contain major reforms. A key provision is the legalization and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the USA. Dreamers, TPS recipients, and farmworkers will qualify for permanent residency immediately and can apply for citizenship after three years. All other unauthorized immigrants will receive a conditional status including work authorization for 5 years and then can apply for citizenship after another 3 years.
There are reforms to the family based immigration system in the bill including steps to clear backlogs, reduce wait times, and recapture lost visas, eliminate the 3 and 10 year unlawful presence bars, consider spouses and children of legal permanent residents as immediate relatives and not be subject to a cap. Increase the per country limits for family based immigrants. There are also reforms to the employment based immigration system in the bill that include provisions to clear backlogs, reduce wait times, and recapture lost visas, eliminate per country limits for employment based immigrants.
Following are some of the key provisions -
It will include a provision for work authorization for dependents of H-1B holders and protection to help their children not age out. It will improve the STEM advanced degree holders ways to stay in the USA. It will improve green card access for workers in lower wage industries. It will give authorization to the department of homeland security to adjust visa numbers based on economic conditions.
It will increase the diversity visa program to 80,000 visas per year up from the current 55,000.
It will reform the immigration courts to reduce backlog and restore judicial discretion to grant relief.
It will expand legal representation and legal orientation programs for immigrations.
There are improvements to asylum, U, T, and VAWA humanitarian programs including the elimination of the 1 year asylum filing deadline and increase the years U visa cap to 30,000 up from 10,000.
It will prohibit future discriminatory bans such as the Muslim and African travel banks. It
It will include reforms to manage the border and ports of entry including increased accountability, resources, technology, and infrastructure.
It will create programs and funding to address the root causes of migration from Central America.
It will include protection for workers from exploitation.
It will include improvements to the E-verify employment verification system.
It will include funding for immigration integration initiatives at the state, local, and community level.
We will update our blog and news section with updates as this bill progress.