ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies key existing policies, the concerns about these policies felt by organized interests in US society, and the possible resolutions to these perceived failings that have been or are being debated by Congress. A comprehensive bill is a piece of legislation that addresses multiple aspects of immigration policy in a single bill and is, by definition, a compromise that addresses the policy goals of multiple interests in US society. Although the roots of the contemporary system of immigration and immigrant incorporation policy can be traced to the nation's earliest days, the statutory foundation was immigration reform legislation passed in 1965. Immigration continues to change the United States fundamentally. More than a million legal immigrants annually join our society. By most measures, immigrants are successfully merging into the larger society and ensuring that the United States lives up to its national rhetoric of being a nation of immigrants.
