Immigration Bills

H.R. 73, the Citizenship Reform Act, would have denied U.S. citizenship to more than 200,000 "anchor babies" born in the United States each year to illegal aliens.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide that no person born in the United States will be a United States citizen unless a parent is a United States citizen, is lawfully in the United States, or has a lawful immigration status at the time of the birth.

H.R. 347, the Immigration Moratorium Act, would have helped reduce chain migration significantly by eliminating several categories of extended-family migration such as parents and adult unmarried children of U.S. citizens. It would have also reduced the ceiling for skilled workers to 5,000 per year from its current ceiling of 120,060 per year, eliminated the category for unskilled workers, required that refugees and asylees reside legally in the United States for five years before they could apply for adjustment to permanent resident status, and would have ended the Visa Lottery.

H.R. 7, the Citizenship Reform Act of 1997, would end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens in the U.S. Once citizens, these babies (some 200,000 a year) can then serve as a magnet for their relatives to immigrate to the U.S.

H.R. 2202, the Immigration in the National Interest Act of 1995, was a large omnibus bill designed to reform the entire immigration system. The legal immigration reforms it included were based on the bi-partisan Barbara Jordan Commission's recommendations for cutting the major links of family-chain migration and protecting American workers from further wage depression. The bill would have eliminated the categories for adult children and siblings and limited that for parents of adults.