ALLOW CURRENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO CHOOSE A SIMPLE STATUS OR ONEROUS CITIZENSHIP PATH

Allow Current Illegal Immigrants to Choose a Simple Status or Onerous Citizenship Path.

The United States has permitted a population of 10.5 million illegal immigrants to build lives in this country—two-thirds of whom have resided in the United States for more than a decade. Congress should provide permanent legal status to all illegal immigrants who have not committed serious crimes. This would allow Congress to build a new system that works without the burdens and failures of the old one undermining it.

Rather than a one‐​size‐​fits‐​all approach, Congress should offer illegal immigrants seeking to legalize their status the option to choose between an onerous path to citizenship and a simple path to permanent residence without U.S. citizenship. The full list of 52 proposals and review the endnote after each reform for details about the statutory reforms necessary to enact it). The Senate‐​passed 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill, for instance, created a new temporary status that mandated, among other things, three separate fees, a $1,000 fine, attendance at English‐​language classes, a 13‐​year wait to apply for citizenship, and an annual income that is 125 percent of the poverty line or no unemployment greater than 60 days. While this approach is appropriate to allow formerly illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, Congress should also offer illegal immigrants the option to receive a form of permanent status without a path to citizenship that is substantially cheaper and less onerous than the path to citizenship. This would protect them from removal and allow them to work legally, while still allowing them the option to pursue citizenship at a greater cost.

Repeal the 3– and 10‐​Year Bars.

A one‐​time legalization is insufficient to prevent this from reoccurring because violations of immigration law will still arise. Congress must also recognize that no matter how much it improves the system, infractions may still happen and that immigrants will need ways to report them and get right with the law. In 1996, Congress made this vastly more difficult by barring illegal immigrants who qualify for a green card (such as through family or employer sponsorship) from receiving one if they have accumulated more than six months of illegal presence unless they remain outside the United States for at least three years. The penalty rises to 10 years for a year of illegal presence. Known as the 3- and 10‐​year bars, these restrictions create a perverse incentive for immigrants to continue in illegal status rather than return to apply for visas in their home countries. Congress should rescind the 3- and 10‐​year bars to incentivize immigrants to follow the legal system.

Permanent Immigrant Registry.

Congress should create a permanent process whereby immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least 10 years can register with the government to obtain permanent legal status. Current law allows immigrants to register with the government if they entered before 1972. Congress should simply replace this hard date with “any date 10 years before the application date,” which would create a permanent legalization process similar to the one in the United Kingdom. This change would make it unnecessary for Congress to repeatedly create new amnesty programs as it did five times from 1929 to 1986. This would also result in granting permanent residency to many of the H‑1B temporary workers who have been waiting for at least a decade to apply for permanent residence and the foreign‐​born children of those workers who lose their dependent legal status when they reach the age of 21.

A permanent immigrant registry program would reduce the illegal immigrant population in two ways. First, it would focus all enforcement resources on more recent entrants, reducing the illegal population at that end. Second, it would allow long‐​time residents to resolve their violations of the law, reducing the population at the other end. This would effectively set a statute of limitations on prosecutions of immigration violations—one of the few offenses that the government can pursue even if the person committed the initial violation many years before.

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