Status of 1.5 million illegal immigrants to US in limbo

Asian immigrants have won a short respite as US immigration reforms, which they attacked for giving priority to skills over family ties, collapsed in Congress last week.

But the bigger question over the status of the 1.5 million illegals from Asia remained in limbo.

The immigration reforms championed by US President George W. Bush were aimed at giving illegal aliens a path to citizenship but could not gain a simple majority in a procedure vote last week to speed its passage in the Senate.

amnesty

Many of Bush's Republican party lawmakers and their conservative base complained that the reform package was in effect an amnesty.

They wanted a controversial provision which would shift some of the emphasis in legalizing the country's 12 million illegal immigrants from family ties toward an applicant's skills and education.

But that was opposed by many Democrats, who complained it would break up families.

"In some sense this failure of the procedural vote gives us a pause in the debate," said Deepa Iyer, executive director of the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow.

"It is stalled but not over," she was quoted saying in a feedback forum by New America Media, a US umbrella for ethnic news groups.

Iyer's advocacy group has joined a growing number of Asian American organizations in slamming the proposed legislation for eliminating some family-based visa categories.

hot topic

Immigration is the hottest political topic after Iraq in the US and also a hugely divisive issue.

Asian Americans are also torn by the stalling of the Senate immigration reforms. Though they back efforts to legalize the 1.5 million undocumented Asian immigrants, many cannot accept the proposed family-based immigration limitations, New America Media said.

Aside from preventing Asian-American citizens from bringing in their adult children and siblings, the Senate proposal places a cap on the number of visas available for them to bring in their parents.

An estimated 90,000 visas per year will be cut to 40,000 and some lawmakers want to amend the legislation to restore the cap.

The Senate proposal also invalidates family-based visa applications submitted after May 2005, affecting an estimated 833,000 pending applications by Asians living in the US.

An amendment to extend the cut-off date to Jan. 1 this year failed in the Senate last week.

"Without this key amendment, over 800,000 applications that were filed after an arbitrary cut-off date of May 1, 2005, will be thrown in the trash," said Karen Narasaki, president of the Asian American Justice Center, an advocacy group.