US Immigration Reforms Revisited

By Almas Akhtar, TMO

President Barack Obama announced full support behind a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws during his second term. On Feb 5, 2013 in Las Vegas, he said “now’s the time” to replace a system which he regarded as  “out of date and badly broken.”

The president specified three pillars of immigration reform: better enforcement of immigration laws, dealing with citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country, and revamping the legal immigration system.

A group of senators from both parties earlier unveiled  the framework of a broad bipartisan reform to the nation’s immigration laws, including a track towards citizenship for the 11 million undocumented aliens in the United States.

The detailed reform will carry the signatures of four Republicans and four Democrats. Senators Chuck Shumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin and Marco Rubio are a few of the notable members of this group. This document will supposedly be drafted by March this year . It is also believed that it will produce tough but fair route to citizenship to the illegal immigrants living in the country.

Immigrants have played a very significant role in the financial growth of the country.  Immigrants are indispensable to the U.S. economy, they are a significant part of the US workforce, research shows that one in every seven workers in the country is an immigrant. Immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs than native-born U.S. citizens. One of every four engineering and technology companies created in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had immigrant founders. Foreign-born scholars, scientists, and engineers have played  imminent role in the prosperity of the country. In the last two decades over one third of Nobel Prizes in the U.S. were awarded to foreign-born scientists. Hispanics, Chinese and South Asian Americans are the three major immigrant groups residing in United States.

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