Retain High-skilled Legal Immigrants in USA

Dear Mr.President and Members of Congress, We are legal immigrants living in U. S. A for many years, we are paying taxes and helping the economy grow. We would like to be part of the future growth of this country. But today we are held back because of unnatural and unreasonable processing delays in the legal immigration system. We feel we have been ignored for years by the congress and a president along with the general public and media. This country has its foundation based on the immigrants from all around the world, and the immigrants have helped keep foundation strong for decades. Unfortunately,this legal immigrant community is struggling to stay in this country. We suggest following steps to ease their pain as well as help the US economy by infusion of this skilled workforce that is ready to buy new houses and other capital assets which they defer to buy because of lack of certainty. 1) Remove the artificial cap on EB visas. An artificial cap of 140,000 EB visas exists today. If an employer proves it that a certain skill is lacking in US economy and accordingly hires foreign person then it doesn’t make sense to subject that skill to an artificial quota.This skill hurts the employers ability to leverage the employee in a better way as the employee gains even more expertise, AND it hurts the employee by having them wait for upto 10-15 years and thus subjecting them to possible abuse by the employer. We demand that this limit itself be removed in the interest of the employers and immigrants which will certainly provide a boost to the economy. 2) Remove the per country limits Per country quotas of 7% exists today. It exacerbates the situation to applicants from high-demand countries like India, China, Mexico and Philippines. Approximately just 10,000 visa numbers are available to India whereas it's estimated that at least 44% of the applicants may be from India (based on USCIS statistics of around 44% of H1bs being granted to India every year). As spouse and children are counted, considering 4 members per family, on an average only 2500 Indian applicants get Green cards in a year. As you can see the numbers are dismal. Meaning, if you are from India, China, Mexico or Philippines, you may have to wait 10 to 12 years or more to get your Green Card. 3) Remove Counting of Family Members towards EB visa Cap. Today Family members (i.e. dependents of the primary EB applicant) are counted towards the EB cap. It makes the already paltry and artificial EB cap even smaller allowing approximately only 60K true skilled workers to enter the workforce every year. 4) Capture Wasted Visas from Prior Years In the last 17 years 218.000 visas have been wasted because of processing delays between USCIS and DOS. If those visas were captured and used, the entire EB backlog today can be removed thus reducing a significant pain for employers and immigrants. We acknowledge that you are aware of the problems but there has not been any action taken from the congress or President to help us. Above are few suggestions from us, and we request you consider directing congress to act on them as soon as possible so that we can contribute even better to the growth and prosperity of this country. Thank you

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