Immigration and Citizenship
Washington, D.C. - Tomorrow at 1:30 p.m., the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “The Separation of Nuclear Families Under U.S. Immigration Law.” At present, about 88,000 green cards are made available each year to the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents but the demand is much higher. The wait list for these green cards is currently two-and-a-half years long but in the past it has been as long as six years. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) released the following statements in advance of tomorrow’s hearing.
Washington, D.C. - Tomorrow at 2:30 p.m., the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “How E-Verify Works and How it Benefits American Employers and Workers.” E-Verify, created in 1996 and operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is a useful tool for U.S. employers to check the legal status of their newly hired employees. Specifically, the Social Security numbers of new hires are checked against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records in order to help ensure that new hires are genuinely eligible to work. The program quickly confirms 99.5% of work-eligible employees.
Washington, D.C. - Tomorrow at 2:00 p.m., the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “From H-2A to a Workable Agricultural Guestworker Program.” This hearing, the second in a series of several hearings on immigration issues, will examine our current temporary agricultural guestworker program and look for ways to create a workable guestworker program. The general consensus among U.S. growers is that the H-2A program is too cumbersome, bureaucratic, expensive, and litigious to use.