Immigration Reform 2013: House ‘Gang of Seven’ Plan Said To Include Path To Citizenship With New Conditions To Appease Republicans

The bipartisan "Gang of Seven" House representatives tasked with drawing up their own version of a comprehensive immigration reform bill are reportedly nearing a final draft, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The plan would make many undocumented immigrants eligible for citizenship while also throwing a bone to the GOP's most conservative members by way of language framing undocumented status in terms of guilt as well as through the establishment of harder triggers which, if not implemented, could mean newly documented immigrants would lose their legal status.

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The Washington Post writes that the House's comprehensive plan would put the offer of legal status for the undocumented in more criminalized terms, by calling the provisional legal status and right to work granted at the outset "probation". It would also require undocumented immigrants who apply for it to admit to having broken US law as well as what the Post calls "guilt (in a civil sense)". But the "probation" it would offer is nearly identical to that of the Senate bill's "provisional legal status".

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That proposal can no doubt be chalked up as a concession to House Republicans, many of whom have voiced loud opposition to the idea of granting "amnesty" to undocumented immigrants. In June, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill called the SAFE Act (Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act), which gives state and local law enforcement increased power to arrest and charge immigrants for overstaying visas or entering the US illegally. If passed into law, the bill would also make it a federal crime for undocumented immigrants to be "unlawfully present in the United States" (it is already a federal crime to enter the US without authorization).

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The path to citizenship which the House bill reportedly contains would be longer than the Senate's bill, too. In the Senate's version, most undocumented immigrants can apply for a green card ten years after they're granted provisional legal status, and three years after that they can become eligible for citizenship - with the exception of workers in certain high-need industries like agriculture, who can get it quicker. The House would allow undocumented applicants to get green cards after ten years too, but they wouldn't be able to apply for citizenship until five years later, making the path a total of 15 years as opposed to 13 under the Senate's bill. But the House bill's path might be troubled if E-Verify - an electronic system to be used by employers to verify whether or not employees are eligible to work in the United States - isn't sufficiently operational. Who gets to say whether it's operational isn't yet clear, but if that happens, everyone who had previously been granted "probation" would lose their legal status.

Further details on the bill may have to wait -- the House "Gang of Seven" has agreed to push back the release of its long-awaited legislation until at least September.