Legal Immigrants Suffer while Lawmakers Debate Illegal Immigrants

Lawmakers in the US debate the fate of millions of Illegal immigrants, while the plight of Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs, a.k.a. Green Card Holders) goes almost unnoticed.

Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) April 29, 2006 -- The Issue: Many legal permanent residents (green card holders) are currently living in the United States, separated from their spouses and infant children. They are waiting for their I-130 petitions (immigration application for spouse and minor children) to be approved. Statutory numerical limitations on available visas, coupled with immigration backlogs and bureaucratic delays, causes waiting times of 5 years or more. Legal immigrants feel that it is unfair and cruel to break up nuclear families. During this long wait, the foreign resident spouse and young children are not allowed to enter the United States, even for a brief visit. The permanent residents, on the other hand, must reside predominantly in the United States and thus the web of US immigration laws ruthlessly separates married couples from each other and from young children. More about the issue at the http://unitefamilies.org/faq/index.html [FAQ section of the Unitefamilies.org website]

The Legislative solution: Congress has only to remove the annual quota on visas for immediate relatives of legal permanent residents, thereby clearing up the backlog and eliminating the long wait. Legislation introduced by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska would make that change. An alternative solution, offered by Representative Robert Andrews of New Jersey and Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas (HR 1823), would allow the spouse and minor children of green-card holders to enter the United States on a special "V visa," and to live here while waiting for their immigration petitions to be approved.

In 2000, the Immigration Family Equity or LIFE Act created a specia* V" visa, allowing spouses or children of green-card holders into the United States after three years if they were still waiting for their paperwork to be processed. This bill expired in 2001, and it was not renewed. Today, sponsors of House Bill 1823 and UniteFamilies are pushing the legislation that would reinstate the V visa.

Amending provisions of V-visa need not necessarily be the only solution; Amending Immigration and Nationality Act to extend the definition of ‘immediate family’ to include spouses and minor children of legal immigrants and US citizens will also serve as a complete solution. This will enable spouses and minor children of legal immigrants to make use of existing non-immigrant K-visa category”, states unitefamilies.org. Group members have already requested offices of Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy to address family unification issue of legal immigrants in their upcoming bipartisan immigration reform bill.
Refer to the website for legislative alternatives http://www.unitefamilies.org/solution/alternatives.html

Unitefamilies.org members feel that the moral power of marriage in immigration reform is being ignored by lawmakers; Matthew 19:6 "What therefore God has joined let no man put asunder", ought to be consistent with U.S. law. That is one reason the UniteFamilies.org has been urging support for the language in the Congress to treat the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents as 'immediate relatives', because that would solve the LPR problem at its root. In an interview, Maine resident Ekaterina Atanasova, a member of Unitefamilies.org says "We’re taxpaying, law-abiding (residents), and we shouldn’t have to choose between our family and our country," Atanasova said. "No one cares about legal immigration."

In a recent Boston Globe column, Jeff Jacoby empathizes on the issue saying “It is no virtue to split husbands from wives, or parents from young children. What is being done to immigrants … is both unjust and unwise. Above all, it is unworthy of a nation built by immigrants.”

Acting on this bill will fulfill the promise President Bush made during his 2000 campaign: “If we are a nation that believes in family values, we need to help husbands and wives and children of permanent residents be allowed to visit while the INS is handling their paperwork.” A group of legal immigrants stated today “four years and a reelection later, we are still waiting for President Bush to deliver on his promise.”

Mohan B
UNITEFAMILIES.ORG
http://www.unitefamilies.org

The Author, is with the 700-member, nonprofit organization, UniteFamlies, founded in 2002 to re-institute legislation making it easier for the families of legal residents to come to the United States. He also blogs about the issue at http://unite.rediffblogs.com.

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