SENATOR KENNEDY INTRODUCES IMMIGRATION FAIRNESS BILL

This week Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who is expected to become the Chair of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee with this week’s shift in the balance of power, introduced a bill that would make numerous significant reforms in the current immigration system.  Called the Immigrant Fairness Restoration Act of 2001, the bill would restore many of the due process protections that were eliminated five years ago in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. 

Clearly aware of the widespread accusations that the 1996 laws went too far, Kennedy’s bill would restore much of the pre-1996 immigration law, especially as relating to deportation.  Perhaps most importantly, it would allow a person in deportation proceedings because of a criminal conviction to apply for whatever relief was available at the time the offense was committed.  It would also eliminate the retroactive application of the expanded definition of aggravated felony, and would also eliminate the retroactive application of expanded ground of deportation. 

It would specify that in determining whether a criminal offense is a crime of moral turpitude or an aggravated felony, the actual length of the sentence served, not the maximum possible sentence, is the determining factor.  It also restores the five-year prison term for most offenses to be considered aggravated felonies, rather than the one-year term that was created in 1996. 

The bill would expand the class of people eligible for a waiver of deportation from those convicted only of simple marijuana possession to those convicted of any drug offense for which they were sentenced to less than one year in prison.  It would expand other waiver of deportation and would eliminate many of the restrictions on judicial review of deportation orders. 

Many of the mandatory detention provisions would be removed, and the bill makes clear that noncitizens have the ability to challenge their detention by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.