New Immigration System to Focus on Nuclear Family and Parents

The under-debating Senate bipartisan immigration bill proposes a merit-based immigration system, and focuses family migration on nuclear family and parents. The new proposals are aimed at ending chain migration and rebalancing importance of family connections with U.S. economic needs. As these new proposals may significantly change the current American immigration system, on June 1st, the White House released more clarifications on the new proposals, especially those related to family immigration. Here are the main points of the clarification:

1. The new bill intends to stop chain migration, which allows immigrants to file immigration petitions for extended family members. The new bill will limit family immigration to nuclear family (A family unit consisting of a mother and father and their children) and parents.

2. Although the new merit-based immigration system will focus on American economic needs, the U.S. will still issue more family-based immigration visas than merit-based visas. The new immigration system will also try to eliminate the decades-long backlog of family-based immigration petitions within eight years.

3. The new immigration system will set caps for green cards for parents of US citizens. Immigration visa quotas for siblings of US citizens and adult children of US citizens and green card holders will be eliminated.

4. The diversity lottery program (green card lottery) will be stopped.

5. The new bill will create a Parent Visitor Visa to allow parents to visit their adult American citizen children in the US regularly and for extended periods of time. Currently, parents usually use regular visitor visa to see their children in the US. This new parent visitor visa will provide significant convenience for parents to see their children in the U.S.

Note:

In the past several years, the immigration reform has been a hot legislative issue. Now, it comes to a critical crossroad. Many aliens in the U.S. have been adversely affected by the visa bulletin retrogression, H-1B cap crisis, and other immigration legal problems. Although politicians are debating on all of these immigration issues in Congress, significant progress cannot be achieved without involvement from the numerous immigrants in the U.S., including many of our readers. So, we encourage you let your voice heard by the legislators by contacting Congressman. We have established an online system to help you contact Congress. Please click on the following link to see more immigration reform updates and contact Congressman through our online advocacy system.

http://www.hooyou.com/advocacy/index.html

In addition, the immigration reform bill must be approved by the House and Senate, and then signed by the President to become a law. The full implementation of the new immigration law needs at least one year, as border security must be enforced at first. There is still uncertainty about the passage and implementation of the new immigration bill. So, we suggest you submit your immigration petition now by whatever venue available to you at the current situation. The earlier, the better, that’s the thumb up rule in immigration applications.

(06/05/2007)

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