The bill was portrayed as a compromise between providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and increased border enforcement: it included funding for 300 miles (480 km) of vehicle barriers, 105 camera and radar towers, and 20,000 more Border Patrol agents, while simultaneously restructuring visa criteria around high-skilled workers.
[2] At the same time, the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act of 2007 was being considered in the United States House of Representatives, although to considerably less public attention.
[7] This effectively ended its chances, and President Bush said he was disappointed at Congress's failure to act on the issue.
By the normal rules of green cards, five years after that the undocumented immigrant could begin the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.
S.1639 would have also ended family reunification, in which an immigrant who becomes a U.S. citizen can ease the process by which their relatives from outside the country can get green cards.
Points would be awarded by the USCIS adjudicating officers for a combination of education, job skills, family connections and English proficiency.
Points-based systems are already used for admitting skilled immigrants in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other developed countries.
The bill would have also created a new program, the "Employment Eligibility Verification System", that would be a central database meant to hold immigrant-status information on all workers living in the United States.
[citation needed] The bill contained within it the entirety of the DREAM Act, a bill that has been introduced unsuccessfully several times in the House and Senate, that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought into the country as minors who either go to college or serve in the U.S. military; it would also restore states rights in determining eligibility for in-state tuition.
[14] Many immigration practitioners, while supporting aspects of the proposal, criticized the bill as "unworkable" and called for fundamentally revising it.