Monday, April 29, 2013

Immigration Roundup: Don’t Forget About the House

by Laura D. Francis

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The immigration world has been all aflutter since the wee hours of April 17 when the Senate’s “gang of eight” introduced its long-awaited comprehensive immigration overhaul bill. Various groups have been pushing for this type of comprehensive approach since the last failed attempt in 2007, and so the actual introduction of the bill—as opposed to the framework the gang released in January—received quite a bit of attention.

The comprehensive Senate bill would overhaul current immigration programs, draw down employment-based green card backlogs, create a new W visa for low-skilled guestworkers, make E-Verify mandatory for all employers, phase out the H-2A agricultural guestworker program in favor of a two-track agricultural guestworker visa program—in addition to a blue card program providing legal status and permanent residence for undocumented farmworkers—and create a pathway to citizenship for most other undocumented immigrants.

But House Republicans wanted to make sure that they weren’t forgotten amidst all the hubbub in the Senate. And they have a different approach to immigration legislation.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, believes that a “step by step approach” to changing the immigration system is best so that each element is carefully thought out and discussed. Republicans in the Senate already have complained that the process is moving too quickly for senators and members of the public to read and digest the 844-page bill.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), however, repeatedly has assured his colleagues that they have plenty of time—the first day for markup of the bill is set for May 9, more than three weeks after its introduction. Also, all amendments will be due by May 7 and publicly posted so that everyone will have a chance to read through them ahead of the markup. And the markup comes after the full committee held three separate hearings on the legislation.

But a day after announcing his preferred piecemeal approach, Goodlatte April 26 introduced two bills: one dealing with agricultural workers and another with E-Verify.

The ag bill contains some of the same elements as the Senate bill—transferring the program to the Agriculture Department from the Labor Department, including nonseasonal farm work—such as dairy—in the program, and worker mobility among employers. Unlike the Senate bill, however, the bill would not provide legal status to undocumented farmworkers.

Meanwhile, the E-Verify bill would make the electronic employment eligibility verification system mandatory within two years of enactment as opposed to five under the Senate bill, although it also would phase in the requirement by employer size. Agricultural employers, regardless of size, would not have to use the system until two years after enactment. But unlike the Senate bill, some employers would be required to use E-Verify to check existing employees’ work authorization.

In Other Immigration News:

• DOL and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are processing H-2B applications again after issuing a joint DOL/Homeland Security Department interim final rule April 24 on how DOL will calculate prevailing wages under the program. The interim rule responds to a March 21 federal district court decision that prevented DOL from using the methodology in its 2008 H-2B wage rule. DOL’s 2011 H-2B wage rule, which was supposed to correct the 2008 rule, has been on hold due to Congress repeatedly barring funding for its implementation.

• A federal judge in Texas may soon issue a preliminary injunction against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s prosecutorial discretion policy and USCIS’s deferred action for childhood arrivals program after issuing a decision April 23 in which he agreed with the ICE agent plaintiffs that the two policies violate immigration law. But the court held off issuing a ruling until the parties more fully brief a pending jurisdictional question.

• Speaking of DACA, USCIS now is issuing data on applications that have been denied on the merits, after several months of posting data only about approvals. Since the program’s launch last August, 1,377 applications have been denied. By contrast, 268,361 applications have been approved.

• The parties in a class action dealing with the “asylum clock”—the 180-day waiting period before asylum seekers are allowed to apply for work authorization—have reached a settlement that, if approved by the court, would allow many asylum seekers to apply for work permits sooner than under current practice. The settlement, among other things, would change the point at which the government considers an asylum application “lodged” and would require the government to be more transparent about how asylum seekers’ actions could affect the start and stop of the clock.

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