How Immigration reform bills will affect immigrants


The Center for Migration Studies made estimates, based on over six independently reform initiatives proposed in 2021, of many persons currently in the United States would have their illegal or legally vulnerable status adjusted to permanent legal status. The CMS analysis does not address the proposed recapture of unused visas nor the “parole” provisions in the Build Back Better (reconciliation) bill. There is a lot of overlap among the initiatives.

It is not clear to me what would be the total maximum number of persons positively affected were all the provisions of all the initiatives done. The U.S. Citizenship Act, Biden’s bill of early 2021, which in effect is a kind of omnibus bill, would affect 10.3 persons. It would likely make unnecessary the parole provision in the reconciliation bill.

The Dream Act of 2021 would legalized 2.3 million persons (compared to about 900M persons under the administrative program initiated by Obama).

Citizenship for Essential Workers Act: 7.2 million (of which 5.5 million are workers, the others are spouses and children).

Farm Workforce Modernization Act: 300K.

Temporary Protected Status adjustments to permanent status: over 1.5 million persons from many countries at least 100,000 of whom from El Salvador, Haiti, Venezuela, and Honduras. Currently, TPS status persons are from 10 countries.

U.S. Citizenship Act: 10.3 million. (Go here and here.) 




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