House GOP Would Legalize 4.4 To 6.5 Million Undocumented Immigrants If Plans Enacted, Says Policy Group

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan public policy group, has released a new report estimating that anywhere from 4.4 million to 6.5 million undocumented immigrants would gain legal status if a House GOP plan for immigration reform were to be passed into law. The group based its estimate on ideas Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said he would favor in immigration reform legislation after he and other Republican leaders rejected a comprehensive bill passed by the Senate last June.

A key point of opposition for Goodlatte – at least on the question of granting legal status to the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the US – was what he derides as the Senate bill’s “special” path to citizenship. Under that bill, the same group of 8 million or so who could get legal status could potentially be eligible for a green card (after 10 years) and citizenship (after 13 years). Goodlatte says he believes that would be unfair to the 4.4 million legal immigrants who’ve applied for citizenship, often languishing in decade-long backlogs.

Instead, the Virginia representative and former immigration attorney is promoting what he calls an “earned” path to citizenship instead – one by which those newly legalized immigrants would have to use current channels to get permanent residence or, eventually, citizenship. Those channels are fourfold: sponsorship by a family member (such as a US citizen spouse or sibling) or employer; by seeking asylum or refugee status; or by the “diversity” lottery for those from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. Under Goodlatte’s approach, already-long backlogs for green cards and citizenship would likely balloon.

In their analysis, the NFAP wrote that another potential feature of a House GOP law – that individuals who gained legal status be sponsored within 6 years of the bill’s passage into law – would likely mean about 2.7 million to 4.1 million legalized immigrants would be able to get a green card (and thus be automatically eligible for citizenship later), far fewer than the 8 million who would likely be eligible under the Senate bill. The analysis noted that while no legislative language has as yet been released on the topic by the House, “these numbers do not include potentially 2 to 5 million people who, if they came forward and did not have disqualifying criminal convictions, could be allowed to stay in the United States in lawful status, theoretically for the rest of their lives, but without obtaining a green card because they did not fit into a legal immigration category.”