According to the State Department. it is 400.000. nearly half a million. Due to that backlog. permanent residents must wait a minimum of 22 months to be reunited with their spouses and children. Consequently. our House bill would have granted 115.000 visas per year for the spouses and minor children of permanent residents. Unmarried adult sons and daughters of permanent residents would have received 35.000 visas under a separate visa category. What did the conference do? They reduced that number down to 88.000 for spouses and minor children. and only 26.000 for unmarried adult sons and daughters of permanent residents. In short. the conference took the second preference category for visas and reduced it by 24 percent. Would that we could do that in some of our spending programs. First preference visas. in addition to that. for unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens and their children. were reduced from 54.000 in the House bill to only 23.400 in the conference report. a 57percent reduction. I do not think that speaks very well for this legislation. So for those Members that were going to vote for this rule in the belief that what we have October -06. 1990 done is to provide for family reunification to go a long way toward helping that. I say. at least in terms of first preference. you have not even gone halfway toward helping. and certainly in terms of the second preference category. That is a shame.
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family reunification visas visa