Rep. Luis Gutierrez Statement On New Immigration Recs

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez made a statement today on proposed rules that would affect immigrants applying for legal status who entered the country without authorization. According to the release:

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) who has spent more than a year urging the Obama Administration to remove obstacles to legal immigration in the absence of any definitive action in the Congress.  The announcement indicates that some spouses and children of U.S. citizens who qualify for a family visa could travel overseas to obtain it without facing a mandatory decade-long exile from their families.  The Congressman first proposed this paperwork processing policy change a year ago, along with a series of other administrative changes, and toured the country to rally support for the Obama Administration to take action.

“I am happy and excited that the President is taking this step,” Rep. Gutierrez said.  “On the immigration administrative fixes I have been fighting for, the President spent the last year saying ‘no I can’t’ and now he is saying ‘yes we can’ and the community will get the message.  This is movement in a positive direction that will not fix broader issues of immigration, but for a certain number of families caught in a bureaucratic nightmare, this is the common sense solutions I have been urging.”

“I am glad that the President is adopting some of the Gutierrez plan to keep families together and make sure that our laws are not unnecessary barriers to legal status and immigration,” the Congressman said.  “When this processing procedure is implemented, some of the families I have been talking to around the country will have an option available to them that gets them in the system and protected from deportation.”