The Gang of Eight and Immigration Reform

What is the Senate immigration reform bill? Click here for bill text

In 2013, a bipartisan Gang of 8 senators introduced the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. This was a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

It passed the Senate 68-32 in June 2013, but was never introduced in the House. (A bill based on the Senate bill was introduced by House Democrats in October 2013 but has not been acted upon, despite Democratic attempts to force a vote.)

The Senate's immigration bill would do the following:

• Provide a path to citizenship that would take 13 years for most of the unauthorized immigrants currently in the country, and less time for agricultural workers and DREAMers.

• Increase border enforcement by allocating an additional $46.3 billion in funding for border security, and requiring the government to double the number of Border Patrol agents and fencing along the border.

• Strengthen interior enforcement by making the E-Verify employment verification system mandatory for all employers, and instituting an entry-exit visa-tracking system to prevent people from overstaying their visas.

• Expand and streamline legal immigration by clearing up the backlog of immigrants with pending applications; create a new green-card system that merges family-based and work-based immigration into a single pool and assigns immigrants "points" to determine their eligibility;
  
  
•  Create a new renewable work visa for low-skilled workers, with annual quotas that depend on market demand.

Many of these components depend on each other — the bill is set up so that the path to citizenship doesn't kick in until certain security metrics have been met and the backlogs have been cleared. These conditions are known as triggers.
Source:  Vox.com that wants us to share this info.