Hotscot

Is there anything in the bill that streamlines the process for legal, qualified, applicants?

scrubbedexpat099

Qualified for what?

Hotscot

Qualified to immigrate.
They keep calling it "immigration reform". I was wondering if it will reform the process for those who have currently applied in the legal manner.

scrubbedexpat099

What category/visa?

Hotscot

Nothing specific...just generally.

scrubbedexpat099

There is over a 1000 pages.

Steve_

Republican "statement of principles": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/us...migration.html

So basically, they support some of it but anyone in the US illegally wouldn't get the pathway to citizenship, they'd get at best conditional permanent residency and have to qualify for full LPR status some other way.

sir_eccles

Two separate classes of PR is something the president is opposed to. See recent discussion in other thread http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=823980

Oh, I see you have :-)

Steve_

I don't think it matters if he's opposed to it, it's either the Republican way or the highway. The "compromise" will be that they're allowed to get full LPR status through some other route, e.g. marriage to a US citizen. So technically they have a "path to citizenship" so Obama can say he won because he got something and the Republicans can say they won because they didn't give up much.

Steve_

And now it's on hold again. I'm sure they'll be more inclined to do it in 2015.

scrubbedexpat099

From everything I have read if anything is ever passed it should be called the Immigration ever bigger cock up bill.

sir_eccles

On hold because the GOP want to wait until after the midterms...

...which from everything I've read will result in a bigger majority for the GOP so no nothing will be passed.

scrubbedexpat099

Assuming that the comment about Undocumented Democrats has some validity.

I do not remember anybody disputing it.

Assuming a best case scenario it would be 3 elections cycles, probably more before there would be impact, what Dem politico thinks that far ahead?

So surely the best bet would be to make it look like it is something they want to do, gets the votes of those in favour, does not lose many votes as nothing is happening and they blame lack of progress on the GOP.

Sounds like a win win to me.

Steve_

It's just a lose lose situation for the Republicans, say they do something, whatever they do won't be as sweeping as what the Democrats would have done, so people who support reform will vote Democrat. And if you do anything at all, you anger the base.

I'm sure the conclusion will be some face saving exercise but there won't be a direct path to citizenship for people in the US illegally, except maybe the people they granted DA to.

Honestly I think S. 744 is just a grab bag full of half-baked proposals that have been around for a long time, some of which make sense, some don't, so perhaps the Republicans are right it should be done piecemeal. But in reality that is code for do nothing.

scrubbedexpat099

Neither side have proposed reform in its usually understood definition.

Otherwise probably left alone, if you are not going to do anything logical why bother?