Immigration Legislation and Issues in the 113th Congress (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised Nov. 4, 2014 |
| Report Number |
R43320 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Bruno, Andorra;Bjelopera, Jerome P.;Garcia, Michael John;Kandel, William;Lee, Margaret Mikyung;Siskin, Alison;Wasem, Ruth Ellen |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
Immigration reform was an active legislative issue in the first session of the 113th Congress. The Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744), a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes provisions on border security, interior enforcement, employment eligibility verification and worksite enforcement, legalization of unauthorized aliens, immigrant visas, nonimmigrant visas, and humanitarian admissions. For its part, the House took a different approach to immigration reform. Rather than considering a single comprehensive bill, the House acted on a set of immigration bills that address border security, interior enforcement, employment eligibility verification and worksite enforcement, and nonimmigrant and immigrant visas. House committees reported or ordered to be reported the following immigration bills: Border Security Results Act of 2013 (H.R. 1417); Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act (H.R. 2278); Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 1772); Agricultural Guestworker (AG) Act (H.R. 1773); and Supplying Knowledge-based Immigrants and Lifting Levels of STEM Visas (SKILLS Visa) Act (H.R. 2131).
Beyond their work on immigration reform legislation, the House and Senate acted on other immigration-related bills. Among these measures, the 113th Congress passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-4), which includes provisions on noncitizen victims of domestic abuse or certain other crimes and on victims of human trafficking. Other immigration issues addressed in enacted measures include Iraqi and Afghan special immigrants (P.L. 113-42, P.L. 113-66, P.L. 113-76, P.L. 113-160), refugees (P.L. 113-6, P.L. 113-76), temporary nonagricultural workers (P.L. 113-76, P.L. 113-164), international adoption (P.L. 113-74), and alien inadmissibility (P.L. 113-100).
Several bills passed one house of Congress, but not the other. In addition to the comprehensive immigration reform bill (S. 744), the Senate passed measures dealing with border security personnel compensation (S. 1691), the application of immigration law in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) (S. 1237), and the visa waiver program (S. 2673). House-passed measures address, among other issues, border security and unaccompanied alien children (UAC) arriving in the United States (H.R. 5230), human trafficking (H.R. 3530, H.R. 3610, H.R. 5135), prosecutorial discretion (H.R. 2217, H.R. 5272), and the visa waiver program (H.R. 938).
This report discusses these and other immigration-related issues that received legislative action or have been of significant congressional interest in the 113th Congress. While the report covers S. 744, as passed by the Senate, a more complete treatment of that bill can be found in CRS Report R43097, Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the 113th Congress: Major Provisions in Senate-Passed S. 744. For the most part, DHS appropriations are not covered in this report; FY2014 appropriations are addressed in CRS Report R43147, Department of Homeland Security: FY2014 Appropriations.
