Visa Lawyer Blog
The Senate and House of Representatives are back in Session today. This Congress is certainly promising on Immigration reform, but we are not so optimistic as to what will happen in practice.
U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, was among the first to urge the incoming Obama Administration to place immigration reform on the list.
According to Dr. Jorge G. Castaneda, professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University in Manhattan, Immigration reform is the sort of complex and costly project that, as a rule, presidents accomplish only at the peak of their power –when their term begins,” he wrote in an Op-Ed in a national newspaper. “If Mr. Obama decides to postpone immigration reform until later, he runs the risk of no longer possessing the leverage to convince his party’s legislators to brace the furies of the extreme right wing.”
“But even without comprehensive reform, Mr. Obama can make a huge difference in the lives of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States,” the Latin American and Caribbean scholar wrote. “Since the late 2006, the Bush Administration has been carrying out ‘tough love’ side of immigration without the generous and open-arms side, which would mean legislation for those in the United States today, and a migrant workers program for those it will need tomorrow.