Our latest newsletter is another special issue covering a massive immigration reform package moving through Congress. As we have with the other major immigration bills, we are providing readers with a detailed summary of the key provisions.

The Specter bill is a compromise bill that is designed to bridge the gap between the enforcement-only approach of the House’s Sensenbrenner bill and the broad legalization provisions found in the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill introduced last year. Most of the enforcement provisions from the Sensenbrenner bill remain, but the Senate bill provides for new guest worker programs designed to ensure employers can access needed workers and that the large undocumented population in the US can be put into legal status. The bill does not grant permanent residency to the undocumented, but it does make it possible for workers to get to the back of the line and pursue a green card legally.

The Specter bill is still being revised, but changes now being introduced are relatively modest compared. Important amendments may still be offered and the bill still may not pass in the Senate, but we decided to proceed with offering a detailed review of the 305 page piece of legislation.

If the Specter bill passes, the House will need to reach a compromise regarding how they will proceed. In December, the House passed the Sensenbrenner reform package. That bill mainly focuses on immigration enforcement, while the Specter bill covers enforcement as well as legal immigration (including the creation of a guest worker program that would be available to out of status immigrants). Whether the House will go along with accepting those changes is far from certain at this point.

The Specter bill has already drawn fire from pro and anti-immigration groups. Certain harsh provisions from the Sensenbrenner bill (including making it a felony to fall out of immigration status) made it into the Specter bill. And the Specter bill includes two new guest worker visa programs – a general program and another for workers in the US without legal status.
While many, many more people will be able to legally work in the US and while green card quotas will rise significantly, it is still very likely that there will be long waits for green cards after the legislation passes. One can easily envision a system where it would take a decade or more for people to eventually achieve permanent residency status. Nevertheless, a long path to permanent residency will likely be seen by immigration advocates as preferable to no path at all. And the ability of illegal immigrants to be able to work, travel home freely and have family members with them in the US will probably convince many that this is a better alternative to the status quo.

We will be monitoring this legislation closely in the weeks and months to come. If I were a betting man, I would still put the odds at no better than 50-50 that the bill will pass. But the picture will become much more clear especially if Senator Frist is able to achieve his goal of getting the Specter bill to the Senate floor for a vote within the next month.


Read the summary of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 here.

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