Immigration Reform: How Soon Will It Happen?

Immigration reform could happen as early as this summer.  The Registered Provisional Immigrant Status (RPI) Bill which was introduced in the
US Senate in April appears to offer an additional way for nonimmigrants to become legal. 

First, RPI could put nonimmigrants into a legal status right away.  Legal status allows for a Social Security number and a state driver’s license.  RPI proposes a 10 year path to permanent residency.  The Bill would give provisional legal status to nonimmigrants if they are working, paying taxes, learn English and pay a $2,000.00 penalty.

After 10 years in RPI status, the applicant and family would be eligible to apply for a lawful permanent resident visa, or “green card”.  After an additional 3 years in permanent resident status, the applicant and family would be eligible to apply
for US citizenship.  (Currently a permanent resident must wait 5 years to apply for naturalization, or 3 years if married to a US citizen).  The RPI process is a 13 year path to US citizenship.  13 years is a long time.  But if a person doesn’t have any
other way to become legal in the US, then this is a good process. 

This new RPI will not be the only way to become legal in the US.  Nonimmigrants who marry US citizens will still be able to be sponsored by their US citizen spouses, US citizen children will still be able to sponsor their nonimmigrant parents and the other forms of Family Immigration will still exist.   Employers will continue to be able to sponsor their employees and future employees.

A family sponsor case under current immigration laws, can take less than one year to complete.  An employer sponsor case can take 6 years to complete.  However, the new Bill also has a provision to eliminate the backlogs which currently
exist in our immigration system.  If the backlogs are eliminated, then a family case could move even faster and an employer case might only take 1 ½ to 2 years to complete.  Both of these are much faster than 10 year process proposed by RPI.

RPI may give us another process for those nonimmigrants who cannot become legal through a family member or through an employer-sponsor. 

If a nonimmigrant could register for RPI, get into lawful status, and then complete an employer-sponsor process, for instance, that person could obtain a permanent resident visa (green card) in 2 years, instead of 10 years.  It may be possible to combine this new RPI status with other immigration processes currently in place, to speed up the process.

The Bill contains a proposal of a $2,000.00 penalty fee.  This may be assessed per
person.  This is a win/win situation for everyone.  The nonimmigrants could pay
the penalty and be allowed to complete their process inside the US.  If the
estimated 11 million nonimmigrants pay $2,000.00 penalty per person plus their
filing fees, this could be enormous revenue to the US government.