Challenge to Green Card Reprieve Fails

Lawmakers sent a strong message of support Wednesday for a provision that allows immigrants with pending green card applications to pay a $1,000 fine and finish their paperwork for legal residency while remaining in the United States, rather than be forced to return to their home countries.

The ultimate fate of the measure, section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, remains unclear and will be hammered out in the coming days by congressional negotiators. But a motion that advocated its demise was overwhelmingly rejected by the House, leaving lawmakers to choose between a permanent extension of the provision--which the Senate already passed--and a compromise. The compromise proposals could offer a shorter life span for the measure or allow only people who are already in the pipeline for green cards to use 245(i).

“It’s a good signal that the voices of moderation and reason are prevailing on immigration issues,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., who supports the provision’s permanent extension. “I think it’s a signal that we will get some kind of an extension.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) introduced the nonbinding motion that would have opposed the Senate’s permanent extension; it was defeated by a lopsided vote of 268-153. But several of the 71 Republicans who voted against Rohrabacher’s proposal said they did so only because they believed his motion demanded dropping 245(i) altogether rather than compromising on the issue.

During an hourlong debate, Rohrabacher said he favors compromise that would show compassion, though his rhetoric was in staunch opposition to the measure.

“We are siding with the families of lawbreakers over those people who stay in line,” he said. Arguing that illegal immigrants who use 245(i) steal jobs from legal residents, he added: “We should side with our own people. We’re supposed to be caring for the citizens of the United States and people who have come here legally.”

About 400,000 immigrants have used 245(i) to obtain green cards in the three years since the provision was adopted, and 1 million people living in the United States qualify, officials say. The provision nets the Immigration and Naturalization Service about $200 million a year, most of which is earmarked for law enforcement and deportation. Originally scheduled to expire in September, 245(i) has been extended until Nov. 7.

The fate of the measure is particularly important because of a law passed last year that bars immigrants from reentering the country for three years if they lived here illegally for six months, and shuts them out for 10 years if they were here illegally for 12 months.

Advocates of a permanent extension argue that many people are simply in technical violation of the complex immigration law, and that deporting them for up to a decade would unnecessarily tear families apart and rob businesses of key employees.

Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) said lawmakers are getting “thousands” of calls with sad stories from immigrant constituents. He told of Rajesh Dua, a scientist from India with a green card whose Japanese wife, Tomoko Nakagawa, is here illegally because her student visa expired and the green card she applied for in 1995 is not yet approved.

Gephardt quoted from a letter from Dua, who is expecting to become a father next month: “To me, it is atrocious to separate a healthy, loving, law-abiding, self-sufficient couple who have realized their American dream.”

The unusual bipartisan coalition that blocked Rohrabacher’s motion is attributable in part to strong lobbying by the business community.

Opponents said the provision is unfair to families who do not violate immigration rules.