No Easy Path to Immigration Reform

The Y visa for guest workers would be good for two years and could be renewed three times, as long as the worker leaves the country for a year between renewals.

Under the four-year renewable Z visa program, employed illegal immigrants could apply for a temporary permit, then stay in the United States after paying a $5,000 fine and a $1,500 processing fee and passing a criminal background check. Heads of illegal-immigrant households would have eight years to return to their home countries for a chance to apply for permanent residency for household members.

Both programs have some unknowns, and size is one of them. In 1986, only about 3 million immigrants applied for legal status.

"How do you register 10 million people in 18 months?" Meyers asked.

Also, before the proposed eight-year deadline for the Z visa program arrived, Congress would require that DHS clear its waiting list of 4 million applications by legal immigrants for visas to reunite relatives, dating to January 2005.

To do that, the government projects having to ramp up the issuance of family-preference visas by 440,000 a year. By comparison, USCIS now processes about 1.1 million green-card requests a year.

Requiring workers to come and go also would disrupt companies and burden immigrant families, said David W. Leopold, an officer of the immigration lawyers group.

"What's the incentive for somebody to leave and come back?" he said. "The more complex it is, the more difficult it will be for people to qualify, which will lead to the same sort of unsolvable illegal population problem that we have now."

Performing security checks also would be difficult. Of 2.7 million names of pending USCIS applicants resubmitted for checks against FBI databases at the end of 2002, 440,000 remain unresolved, the FBI has said.

In one of its most significant proposed changes, the Senate plan mandates a move -- after the family waiting list is cleared -- to awarding visas using a point-based merit system based on education, English proficiency and job skills rather than family relations.

While the change is politically contentious, it also could pose "a crapshoot for employers," said Carl W. Hampe, a Washington lawyer and former Senate Judiciary counsel who helped draft the 1986 law. Hampe said lawmakers rejected a point system back then, concerned that it would be too rigid for Congress and immigration agencies to adjust to market changes.

William Yates, former head of operations for USCIS, said the task would be made more difficult by growing pains in DHS.

"Can it be implemented? Yes. . . . Is it going to be difficult? Yes," Yates said. "And is it going to be more difficult because it's such a new department? Yes."