"Immigration Reform" is good, but seriously inequitable [View all]

[TT_Progress]

I posted this as a comment but since there seem to be people here who have the ear of party leaders:

I am for relief for undocumented immigrant families; but the executive needs to fix the other inequities and issues with immediate relatives of US citizens before overwhelming the system. Right now there are terrible inequities that do not get fixed because some groups, like citizens with spouses and children of other nationalities, do not have lobbying powers.

The immigration system is a terrible and tragic patchwork due to inequities in lobbying power. This has been seriously agitated by the addition of Homeland Security which is a terribly rigid institution and is not flexible when families are involved.

There are several hundred thousand mixed nationality citizen families who have to wait several years for their spouses and children. Even when the marriage may be 30 years long, they will be artificially and inequitably separated if they enter or return to the US because they have no lobby.

**The system now allows foreign laborers to bring their spouses to the country and the process is ** a month!

** Foreign labor gets super fast service - 6-8 weeks for the primary and a paid expedite option is available.

** Because of an executive change last year, undocumented immigrant spouses can now apply to be processed without having to separate and can remain in the country (which is a good thing). But because of the inequitus nature of the system they are placed in the same queue as other immediate families, actually causing the normal processed families to be apart **longer**. Those queues need to be seperate and families that are apart need to be processes first.

** It is impossible to bring in a spouse of a citizen or permanent resident (legally) without the long wait, but the US allows people who bypass the system and bring a fiancee over on a visitors visa to adjust their status and remain together without interruption.

All immediate family members should be processed equitably. They should all have an abbreviated visa that allows them into the country (as happens with work visas now) where processing is finalized. EQUITABLY!

But none of these problems are in the special interest lobbying for "immigration reform" It will just add to the mess created through legislation by lobby power, instead of truly reforming the system. In fact, the immigration lobby is asking that non-immediate family members (adult brothers/sisters/aunts uncles etc) be allowed into the same priority as immediate family. If the other issues are not fixed first that will entirely mess over many families who are trying to be united.