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LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
The biggest item on the immigration agenda in Congress right now for pro-immigration advocates is the extension of Section 245i of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Normally, persons who have violated their immigration status are not permitted to process their immigration applications in the US. They must have them processed at a US consulate. In 1994, Congress added a provision to the law that allows persons otherwise ineligible to adjust status in the US to pay a penalty (now $1000). That law is important because the new immigration law says that a person who falls out of immigration status for 180 days can be barred for three years from re-entering the US. The penalty goes to one year if one remains out of status for one year or more. If one can remain in the US and find an avenue to immigrate, they can avoid these bars. Right now, Section 245i is the main way one who has previously violated his or her immigrant status can stay in the US and process a green card application. Unfortunately, the law expires on September 30th, just three days after the 3 and 10 year bars take effect. 
On July 15, 1997, the Senate Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Committee voted to include a permanent extension of Section 245i in the budget bill for the next fiscal year. The bill also calls for a study to consider increasing the penalty fee beginning in October 1998 and a separate study to review the administration of the penalty fee system. On July 29th, the full Senate approved the extension of Section 245i.
The corresponding budget bill in the House of Representatives, however, does not contain a Section 245i provision. Debate on the Senate bill was scheduled to conclude during the week of July 28th. The House/Senate conference to resolve differences between the two budget bills will take place in September. 
In other Congressional news, the House Immigration Subcommittee approved legislation that would require Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS") officials to screen aliens arrested for criminal violations for prior crimes before their arraignments in order to prevent their release back into the community. The INS would first conduct a pilot program at the Anaheim City Jail in California. The program would then be expanded to include all prisons in the 100 counties in the country with the highest concentrations of illegal aliens. Prison officials from California, New York and Florida testified to express their distress at current INS procedures for expediting the deportation of criminal aliens. Further, the General Accounting Office recently issued a report indicating the INS failed to hold hearings on nearly 6,000 of the 17,320 foreign-born inmates released during the second half of 1995 from prisons surveyed by the GAO. 
And finally, a Senate subcommittee has approved a one-year extension of the Lautenberg Amendment, a law which permits historically persecuted groups seeking refuge in America, including Jews and evangelical Christians in the former Soviet Union, to enter the US with a showing of a "credible basis for concern" about the potential for persecution. This is a lower standard than the normal requirement to show a "well-founded fear of persecution." Earlier, the House failed to approve an extension of the provision partly in reaction to a Congressional Budget Office cost assessment claiming the provision would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the federal budget. The CBO later issued a clarification indicating that the proposal would not affect the budget if extended for one additional year.
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