Understandable people respond negatively to such a critical bill at a time for record unemployment. However, American economy is slowly but surely recuperating and with the recent string of reformist measures in Europe – 2012 is looking like much more pragmatic and less risky place. I’m confident US unemployment will drop to 5-6 % by July 2012.
However, every month delayed on this bill is excruciating especially for those with High talents and skills and who are contributing hugely to the American Intellectual and Competition industry in high skilled jobs! Waiting a decade on a lifeline is something that is impossible for someone not on such a wait created artifically longer because of per-country limits!

Imagine not being able to purchase your own house for years because you dont know when you’re time is up during the long wait for the Green Card! I do hope Senator Chuck Grassley looks beyond his viewpoint – this bill doesnt increase the core numbers – there’s no danger to US jobs.

No, this bill doesn’t NOT freeze anything. It attempts to clear the existing backlog i) in a phased manner and ii) in 3 years.

when you say, “rest of the world EB3 have been waiting for 5-6 years …”, you are conveniently skipping the fact that in the rest-of-the-world(ROW) category, as of now, only Mexico AND PHILIPPINES are backlogged. But they are backlogged only till 2006. While India is backlogged till 2002 and China till 2004.

And this is precisely the reason why I posted all the statistics in earlier comments. If you are unable to understand those numbers and the reasoning behind it then there’s nothing we can do to, sorry. Again, starting from 2007, your ROW category has applications in 3 digits, literally around 500, every year till 2011. So given this 3 digit number and your 2006 backlog for Mexico/Phil, you can do the math yourself and will realize that your fact-twisting logic falls flat on it’s face.

First come first served(or a FIFO queue – first in first out) = FAIR.

The bill also tries to increase per-country limit for family based immigration that will benefit Mexico/Philippines. Why aren’t you complaining about that? So it seems like a uni-directional bashing towards India/China?
Let’s focus on building the next big thing, shall we?

Does the current system really ensure fairness? As someone quoted earlier, if you walk into a restaurant, then should you be asked to wait just because of your ethnicity?

Let the best talent win. Talk to any silicon valley or high-tech recruiter and he/she will tell you that they recruit candidates based on their skill-sets and not on their country of origin. Diversity in a high-tech
company comes from diverse: skill-sets, disciplines(math,Computer Science,Electrical engineering,operations research and so on), experiences/stints.

You need diverse cooks/chefs(from mainland) in a continental kitchen in order to make a traditional entree. This doesn’t hold true for engineering jobs.

Current system insures the fair diversity. That means that even amount of visa’s issued to all countries. With the new system countries with bigger populations (India, China, etc..) will get an advantage over other countries, as they would consume the most amount of visas.

Occupy US? Really? These aren’t FOBs who came here 6 months ago.

As someone quoted – We are talking about giving green cards to those who are legally in this country. They drive on the same roads as others, pay the same taxes, their children go to the same school as others. All we are talking about is changing their status from temporary to a permanent resident. So where are we losing diversity? About unemployment – giving them a GC does not mean they will take up a new job. They are already working. So the overall employment number remains the same.

And now if you are complaining about unfairness in the game, where in the world do you think a first-come-first-served(FIFO queue – first in first out) rule is wrong?

India and China are excluded from the diversity visa (DV) program. The DV folks who come here often rely on welfare benefits. Don’t they hurt our welfare funds? Funds which are actually needed for senior citizens. Why don’t you raise your voice then?

The bill eliminates diversity in the skilled immigrant categories. It benefits India and China but is detrimental to immigrants from every other country in the world. For every Indian or Chinese worker who sees their green card wait shortened, an immigrant from Canada, Australia, any European country, Japan, Brazil, Malaysia (the list goes on and on…) will see their wait time correspondingly lengthen.

China and India, the largest two nations on earth, have enough people to completely overwhelm the immigration system. If HR.3012 passes, immigrants from smaller countries don’t stand a chance.

This bill is ill-conceived legislation and it deserves to fail.

Lies spread by HR 3012 proponents:
- India/China only gets 7% employment visa:
WRONG! Every year India alone gets 21-22% visas- because unused visas from other categories fall in their pocket.
- HR 3012 reforms the employment based immigration for better:
WRONG! It practically allocates pretty much all visas to India and China only for the next three years- all other countries will suffer a 6 year additional wait time on the average.
- Some green card applicants from India may suffer a 70 year waiting period:
WRONG! The worst category in employment based immigration has a waiting period of 9 years now, which will be further reduced as a direct consequence of the visa spillover rule.
- HR 3012 will bring fairness to immigration by eliminating country limits:
WRONG! The bill will be unfair to those from all other countries facing an additional 5/6 years of waiting period.
The educated workforce diversity will be at stake.

This legislation will favor Chinese and Indian workers. I have no issue with such people looking for a better life in the U.S., but as it is now it is at the expense of the American quality of life: such workers are paid significantly less than American counterparts, and are often subject to more over time, being perpetually on call, etc etc.

Plenty of studies make this transparent. E.g.
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_10_26/us/us_h1b_visa_holders_earn_less.htm

If any regulation is needed in this area, it is that which gives these workers equal compensation to the Americans they are displacing (whether Americans are entitled to having priority for these jobs is a completely different issue). But if such regulation were on the table, then special interests would no longer contribute $100,000s to the bill’s supporters—instead giving it to their competitors

Again, the issue is money in politics. The solution is Disclose Act, repeal of Citizens United, Publicly funded Elections.

In addition to the green cards, the government issued 881,840 temporary work visas and gave refugee or asylum status to 96,721 aliens. The total increase to the American workforce was 1.75 million foreign workers. According to the Census Bureau, 1 out of every 6 workers is foreign born.

Source: Immigration Skyrockets as Americans Lose Their Jobs
by Virgil Goode

Logically this bill does not make sense.
Employment based green cards accounts for a tiny fraction of all green cards issued every year.
People waiting for employment based green card should not be differentiated on the basis of their birth of their country.

This is a BAD bill folks. This is NOT to get in the worlds smartest scientist or the worlds best anything!
They can get in easily enough!

If you have a unique skill, visa is practically instant.
These are Indian engineers, IT workers, other tech industries that want CHEAP labour. They work for half what we do!
GOP help the corporations again!

Per-country caps are our way of controlling what our culture becomes. This is poorly appreciated. I think the US has a right to have an opinion on what values are being brought in. I have no a priori problem with any particular set of values or raising cap levels for any particular country. But I think the caps should remain available for our use. Removing them entirely is a nonsensical jettisoning of a useful control. Why do it?

Please vote YES,

Like beloved Steve Jobs mentioned, this country needs an engineers who studied in here so the country can maintain the techinical competency when it comes to challenges..If you look at Steve Jobs auto biigraphy he clearly asked Obama to give green cards for the students

Just simple math: a Chef from different counrty getting GC, whereas a techie who studied here had to wait long time to get GC

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.

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

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.

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?

Some posters made false claims that immigration law protects the career interests of American citizen technical professionals. Here is a powerful rebuttal:
Scamming Immigration Attorneys at Cohen & Grigsby (C&G) Screen Out Americans

This has become an incredibly popular video. There have been 408,299 views since June 16, 2007. Remember this is a video summary of C&G’s 2007 immigration presentation. Also, as the Department of Labor Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2006-2011, available for download from Scribd.com, notes on pages 34-35, these protections do NOT apply to American workers being displaced by H-1Bs about 99% of the time. The employer can force the departing US worker to train their replacement as a condition of receiving their meager outplacement benefit. More than 37 million work visa admissions in just 5 high-skill programs between 1975-2010. The consequence is that millions of Americans are impoverished – Some die prematurely.

So who’s going to create this new “skill judging” system?

End racism now!

This is about first come first serve and not discriminate talents based on their birth origin. VOTE YES and PASS H.R. 3012.

I am with you. If the Indian posters really think they are “highly-skilled”, why dont they apply for EB-1, which is current for them?

“The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011” does not raise the number of visas issued annually, but, by removing the limit on the number of visas issued to individuals from any one country, would begin to reduce the backlog of Indian and Chinese immigrants who currently have longer waiting times than other nationalities. Not coincidently, immigrants from these countries hail from the two most populous nations in the world, with economies that have risen as global competitors over the last decade. They also have some of the highest levels of educational attainment and income among immigrants in the United States. Bottom line: the migrants who would most benefit from this bill are viewed as the cream of the crop.

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.

When a person from India comes to US he not only brings his wife and kids, but also their parents, brothers, sisters, their families who all consume visa. Where as when a person from rest of the world comes he only brings his immediate family not the whole neighborhood.