U.S. Congress - H.R.3012 Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act
H.R.3012 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act
To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants, to increase the per-country numerical limitation for family-sponsored immigrants, and for other purposes. view all titles (4)
All Bill Titles
- Official: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants, to increase the per-country numerical limitation for family-sponsored immigrants, and for other purposes. as introduced.
- Short: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act as introduced.
- Short: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 as reported to house.
- Short: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 as passed house.
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Displaying 61-90 of 119 total comments.
As mentioned by octavius_20 – This bill will allow the US employment-based immigration system to judge people on skills and merit on a first-come-first-serve basis, without distinguishing by national origin. US employers do not distinguish by national origin and the US employment-based immigration system should not either.
I agree with this completely.
Please vote NO! The purpose of the country caps is to maintain the diversity of the American culture built over the centuries with immigrants from all over the world. Removing these caps will allow a huge influx of immigrants from overpopulated countries like China and India which will affect the balance of the immigration diversity in the country.
For Diversity there are 50000 GCs available through Diversity Lottery visa program for which China and India are not eligible. Employment Based visas should be based only on merit and nothing else.
Lzoccoli – your assessment of this bill is wrong. The quota for employment-based immigrants makes up no more than 15% of the total legal immigrant quota. The other 85% still has “per country limits” to maintain “diversity” of incoming immigrants. All this bill does is removes the per country limit for the employment-based immigration category (again, that category is less than 15% of the total legal immigrant quota). So as such, this bill will eliminate the discrimination by national origin of employment-based immigrants without adversely impacting overall “diversity” of incoming immigrants. If you don’t understand the math, I’d recommend visualizing a pie chart and applying what I have said above.
This is a right step in the right direction after so long! There are countless bright and hardworking immigrants from India and China who pay taxes and contribute to the economy but are left unsettled by the status of their green cards just because of the country of the origin. I know of many people who are stuck with their employers and cannot get promotion or a salary raise while the person from another immigrant country does not have to go through this because they get their green cards faster. Imagine the plight of the person who has to go to India/china for some family emergency but still has to go through the visa stamping process and if the US consulate rejects he is stuck there. These are issues that a lot of people outside of the India/China immigrant community has not probably dealt with. This bill is a long time due…please support and pass this bill!!!
With millions of unemployed Americans why do we need to flood the job market with more cheap foreign workers. Help Americans, your citizens first before foreigners.
we are in line to become the next wave of citizens too. Infact our kids are first generation americans who blend like a melting pot and not like a salad bowl. see folks like you just don’t get the mechanics. engineers build things(silicon/defense equipments etc) in USA. Then we(as in USA) flood the ROW with these products and make our(USA) economy even stronger. Now, in that process the rich get richer(but that’s not the point).
So help us build this economy. There are atleast 50% immigrants who are not willing to take the risk of buying a house because of green-card issues.
Imagine the (positive)jolt we can give to this economy if the backlog was cleared in 12-18 months and we were to buy approximately half million dollar houses?
This bill is designed to benefit large bodyshopping IT companies that apply in masses for their employees.
Will reduce the diversity in “skill set” as it favors a particular industry for particular countries
vishalbalchandani – That’s complete baloney ;). This bill is trying to clear the existing backlog in a phased manner. These folks already have jobs.Sure, diversity is always needed and is very important. So using that very same argument, why is there a preference for medical graduates? Why do foreign-born medical graduates have different laws? Do you not need engineers?
As someone mentioned earlier in these blogs, there’s a diversity category that takes care of this. India/China are not eligible for this category.
But again I wonder, you don’t mind folks driving cabs in NewYork, who might get there using the very same diversity program. But you mind folks getting their green-cards(in an expedited fashion) who already have jobs?
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So how do you propose a check and balance to prevent body shopping companies from applying for a immigrant visa for every Tom Dick & Harry and not clogging up the pipeline for people from their country of origin?
Good point. People who work for those body shops typically are low quality. Have their Labor Certifications denied and approve Labor Certifications only for those who have received STEM degrees from well reputed US universities or are directly employed by well-reputed US companies. Besides, I’d imagine that immigrants that slip through the crack from body shops will be in the minority. I do agree though that there should be a check and balance against body shopping for Green Cards, but it should not prevent this bill, which will benefit mostly legit highly skilled immigrants, from passing. Just make the Labor Certification process tougher so that body-shopping companies can’t get their bodies through.
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Country of origin should have no place in an employment based immigration system. It’s surprising that this discrimination has been going on for so long. Employers care about skills and merit, not where you were born. It’s about time these country limits are removed!
For people who are opposing, I am just one of many examples of how unfair the current system is. 12th year in this country, 9th year in green card queue and still 5 to 10 years to go before I see my green card.
This bill is very simple. No changes to limits, No changes to requirements, No No to discrimination. This bill simply implements “Queue = First Come First Serve” rule while issuing Employment based Green Cards. By the way, how come a Korean or Finnish employee with same skills set be more valuable than an Indian or Chinese employee? Companies always say they are equal opportunity employer.
All of those who are waiting in the queue are very high skilled, highly educated, and highly paid “legal” workers working for biggest and brightest companies here in the US.
PASS the bill ASAP.
For those of you worried that this bill will drive down wages for American workers, it will not. In fact, if this bill is NOT passed, wages will continue to be driven down. Here’s what currently happens: Foreign Worker gets hired by H-1B and works for a company —> Knowing they can’t switch employers while their Green Card is in progress, company takes advantage of foreign worker for several years by paying them a lower salary —> US workers get priced out and wages get driven down. If this bill is passed, US employers will no longer be able to use the Green Card noose as a bargaining chip for 10+ years (since the GC process will be shortened to 2 – 3 years if the bill is passed). Result —> Wages for US and foreign workers alike go back up. Help pass this bill folks. It’s good for the US economy.
Please pass this bill. It is good for the US economy.
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Please support and pass this bill. It is high time that we give all the due rights to the skilled workers who are helping to improve the economy of this country.
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Visa numbers/statistics speak louder than words
Comment 2: start
Dear Senators:
Please support this bill.
To better assist you in pitching our case, I have posted some more high-level data after mining the raw-format posted by USCIS. I used a simple computer program to arrive at the numbers.
Before we look at the numbers, here’s some USCIS lingo.
1) The public data(PERM application) posted by USCIS contains Certified/Withdrawn/Denied PERM status.
2) Public data does not mention the class(EB1/EB2/EB3) of the applications. But that’s ok. We just want to get a feel of the per-country statistics.
3) PERM application – This is the first stage in the green-card process.
I am only running numbers from year 2007 – 2010. 4 years worth of data is plenty to get a good feel of the current state of affairs.
Comment 2: discontinued due to word length limit.
Visa numbers/statistics speak louder than words
Comment 2: <2.1> continued
legend:
green-card applications: GCA
2007:
total GCA: 98754, certified GCA: 85111, Denied GCA: 10581 Withdrawn:3060 (withdrawn are not so important. So it will be ignored in the next few lines)
2008:
total GCA: 61998, certified GCA:49205, Denied GCA: 10729
2009:
total GCA: 38247, certified GCA:29502, Denied GCA:5356
2010:
total GCA: 81412, certified GCA: 70237, Denied GCA:8439
Now let’s look at per-country numbers:
2007:
India : 24573(28%) , China:6846, Mexica:6442, SKorea:5159, Canada:4837, Philipines:4821, (UK,Taiwan,Pakistan,Colombia,Brazil,Japan,Poland etc):anywhere between 1000-2000
2008:
India: 7197(15%), (China/Mexico/…/UK/Taiwan/Poland) : anywhere between 500 -1000
2009:
India: 6403(21%), (China/Mexico/…/Poland) : 500 -1000
2010:
India:14872(21%), (China/Mexico/../Poland) : 500 – 1000
Comment 2: <2.1> discontinued due to word length limit.
Visa numbers/statistics speak louder than words
Comment 2: <2.2> continued
As the economy dipped, so did the overall applications. Which does make sense.
From the data above, notice how applications from ROW (rest of the world – Mexico/Philipines/Canada/UK/Taiwan/Poland/etc) are so miniscule that they wouldn’t have to wait in line for the next 5-10 years. And why do I say 5-10 years? That’s because it’s like a credit history. If someone has not been defaulting (on their payments) for the last 10 years then there’s a good probability that they would not default again. Simple mathematical model that we use everyday.
So putting everything together, H.R. 3012 truly helps is clearing the existing backlog of green-cards. And that too in a phased manner. It does not use a big hammer approach. Period. In addition to that, going forward, it brings a fair rule – first-come-first-serve basis. Which does make sense.
Thanks for your time.
Comment2: ends here
Though it is illegal to discriminate based on national origin en employment, employment based green card system discriminates based on country of origin. This hurts US competitiveness as applicants from certain countries has to wait up to 70 years because they are born in a particular country. This bill removes the country limit in employment based green card system giving green cards based on “first come first serve” basis.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. —http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/index.cfm
This bill is designed to give green cards to applicants based on skill on a first come first serve basis. Country caps have no place in employment or employment based immigration. This bill does not add a single visa number to the system.
This bill also increases the country cap from 7% to 15% without increasing a
single visa number. This will be helpful to lot of family based immigrants who are separated from their loved ones.
In addition to making it easier on applicants, it makes America more competitive and upholds american values.
Thanks for introducing this simple but sensible bill.
This bill neither makes the immigration system fair for everyone nor makes America more competitive. Please read to the end to understand why. This bill makes it easier for Chinese and Indians to get a green card and makes it harder for the rest of the world. In other words, it makes US immigration less attractive to the whole world except China and India by forcing the applicants of the all countries to go behind a long queue and wait for years. This makes India and China dominant immigrant exporters in the skilled worker category, and creates a true monopoly (85%). Let me give you an example to understand the problem with this bill: Why in the US presidential election, the states use the system of delegates instead of a single general election? Because of the possibility of the dominance by populated states over the rest of the country. This is unfair and the US does not do that. The same arguments works for this bill and clarifies its unfairness.
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