Hi!

“The bill creates the Prevent Unauthorized Migration Visa (PUM Visa) that seeks to provide for safe, humanitarian migration during the three-year transition period before the enactment of recommendations made by the new Labor Commission.

-Creates 100,000 PUM visas annually, for 3 years, to persons from those countries which represent at least 5% of the total unauthorized migration population within the United States for the past five years and will be distributed on a percentage basis through a lottery system.

-Individuals may apply to the lottery if they are not present in the United States at time of filing, do not have other family or employment based means to immigrate, submit to criminal background checks, and have completed less than a 4 year college degree program.

-Individuals awarded visas will be admitted to the United States as conditional residents and may petition for LPR status after 3 years.”

According to a Pew report, from 2000-2005, there was an annual rate of 850,000 unauthorized migrants coming into the United States. The PUM visa program has an 100,000 per year allotment. Therefore, if we consider 850,000 as close to the current rate of unauthorized migration, there is still 750,000 migrants that will attempt, or succeed, in crossing into the United States.

But then we must consider the ramifications of the legalization of current undocumented individuals in conjunction with the enhancement of the family-based immigration part of the bill. If, say, 12 million undocumented individuals legalize, they will then be able to bring in many of their relatives that would have otherwise migrated here illegally. It is difficult to calculate, in concrete numbers, how much this will cut down on the amount of unauthorized immigrants Nonetheless, it appears that if this bill is passed, there will still be a considerable amount of unauthorized migration.

Some may say that the enhances border provisions of the bill prevent further unauthorized migration. But, as any realist can see, if there is a will to come here, a way will be found, regardless of the obstacles.

So, Nezua, you may be right in saying this: “Fact is, just about every law maker has the same blind spots because those seem to be built in to the nationalist exploitive approach toward cheap labor, which our system so far does its best to guard from real progress.”

But, as anyone that has delved into the nativist websites(I did so with ALIPAC) knows, a significant factor contributing to the comprehensiveness of the CIR by Gutierrez, is the strong opposition and subsequent political considerations needed to be heeded by the supporters of CIR. Realistically, any bill on CIR will have serious flaws, but it is not a matter of making a perfect bill; it is a matter of finding the one with the least serious flaws.

In this moment in time, this bill has the potential to exponentially improve millions of millions of lives. For that reason alone, I support it wholeheartedly.

Whatever does pass, it will have serious flaws(Washington is so ineffectual), but the Gutierrez bill is much better than the status quo.

The “future” avenues for immigrants from south of the border is not so clear. For example, I have(and I’m sure most don’t) no idea how many immigrants, on top of what is coming in now, the United States should allow to enter legally.

I can discuss this in more detail at a later date since I’m not in the most coherent of mindsets.