Immigration: 300 Proposed Amendments and Counting

Today is the 4th day of the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up of immigration reform Bill S. 744 and activity is fast and furious.  300 Amendments have already been proposed to the Bill, some bad, some good.    CT Senator Blumenthal continues to be very supportive of immigration reform.  Please call him and thank him for being strongly in favor of due process and immigrant issues.    In particular, Senator Blumenthal has proposed Amendment 14 to prohibit the retroactive application of any offense that would result in an alien’s inadmissibility or deportability, to clarify the definitions of conviction and term of imprisonment… to prohibit the execution of an order of removal… until after an immigration judge makes specific findings of fact, and to slightly modify the circumstances under which an alien is deemed inadmissible or deportable due to a criminal conviction and incarceration.   Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) has proposed Amendment 9 to reduce the number of years an applicant must be a Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) to 3 years and continuous physical presence for an LPR to 3 years in order to apply for US citizenship; and to reduce the number of years of continuous physical presence for a non-LPR Cancellation of Removal case to 5 years instead of the current 10 years, and reduce “extreme and unusual hardship” to “extreme hardship”, and remove the annual cap for Cancellation of Removal.   Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) has proposed Amendment 18 to remove the annual cap on Cancellation of Removal cases.    Any law which is retroactive is problematic for Due Process concerns.  How can someone know today, what will be illegal in 20 or 30 or 50 years from today?  If you are convicted of a petty larceny offense in college, for failing to return a library book that you borrowed, should that offense bar a person from becoming a legal immigrant 20 years later, especially if the offense was not a bar at the time that the offense was committed?  If you are 21 years old and foolishly shoot a can off a rock in your backyard, discharging a dangerous weapon within city limits, should that bar a person from permanent resident status 30 years later, when it would not have been a bar to permanent residence when the crime was committed?  A law which bars a person from permanent resident status for any crime involving a dangerous weapon today, applied retroactively to an offense committed 20 years ago, can be a violation of Due Process, since the 21 year old student could not have anticipated that his foolishness would one day result in banishment from the US 20 years later.   One very harsh Amendment proposes imprisonment for a period of not less than 60 days and not more than 90 days for any alien who was admitted to the US on a valid temporary visa (such as a visitor visa) and who remained in the US beyond the period of stay authorized by such visa.  This could mean that a grandmother, who came to visit her grandchildren for Thanksgiving and was talked into staying in the US through Christmas, beyond her authorized stay, could be imprisoned for 90 days.