The US Commission on Immigration Reform has released its final report, more than two years after its initial recommendations were presented. The report will call for a reformation of the entire system for admitting immigrants. The USCOIR calls for priority to be given to close family members separated for years due to queues for certain visa categories, but the report also calls for the reduction in the number of people admitted. The USCOIR criticized what it found as a system that encourages people to come in illegally, punishes those who follow the rules and forces people to choose between their marriages and US immigration law.
The panel is particularly concerned about the million person backlog in the category of spouses and minor children of permanent residents. Only 88,000 visas are available in this category each year. More than two-thirds of these people are estimated to be in the US illegally. The waiting period in this category has jumped by more than 40% in the last two years alone. Applicants applying today, according to the report, can expect to wait up to ten years for their priority date to become current. Once the petitioner becomes a citizen, processing can begin right away, but citizenship applications now take on average close to two years to process. According to the Commission, such backlogs makes the system dysfunctional and encourages people to resort to immigrating illegally.
The USCOIR has recommended shifting priorities and eliminating certain family categories such as for adult children of citizens and permanent residents. But key members of Congress have remained opposed to any such suggestion.
As reported in earlier issues of our newsletter, the Commission’s report did, in fact, contain a recommendation to disband the INS and transfer its responsibilities to other agencies. But this proposal has come under considerable criticism from a variety of pro- and anti-immigration sources including the National Immigration Forum. The plan “would recklessly disperse the agency’s functions in a way that would likely make a bad situation worse,” a spokesman for the pro-immigration the National Immigration Forum was quoted as saying.
Finally, the report emphasized a need to focus on the “Americanization” of immigrants in order to better integrate them into US society. The USCOIR called for greater funding of English-language and civics programs.
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