The Citizens and Legal Immigrants Act
On May 5, the House approved legislation I authored, H.R. 100, the Citizens and Legal Immigration (CALI) Act, as a part of H.R. 418, the Real ID Act, and H.R. 1268, the Emergency War Supplemental bill, by a vote of 368 to 58. The CALI Act will address the mushrooming number of immigration cases by criminal aliens by streamlining the judicial deportation process. On May 11, President Bush signed these bills into law.
Immigration cases are now the single fastest growing segment of the federal courts' docket, with more than 15,000 new cases filed by aliens each year. Indeed, more than 43 percent of the cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals now involve immigration review, and every federal court is experiencing the pressure of immigration litigation. In many cases, criminal aliens are afforded greater opportunities for judicial review than even U.S. citizens, thereby extending their incarceration prior to deportation at significant cost to the U.S. taxpayer. The CALI Act will help clear the immigration case backlog and bring common sense to the system.
Specifically, the CALI Act clarifies for courts and immigrants the proper forum for immigration cases, while preserving the ability of all aliens to obtain review of constitutional issues and pure questions of law in the Circuit Court of Appeals. The bill ensures that criminal aliens do not have a legal advantage over non criminal-aliens, and restores the fundamental purpose of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that aliens who are harmful to our communities and national security be promptly removed.
