Change HR 3012 Transition Periods
Dear Senator,
I am writing to request your support to amend H.R. 3012 (Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act) by making the bill's transition periods fairer and more predictable to high-skilled immigrants who are currently waiting for employment-based immigrant visas.
This bill passed the US House of Representatives on Nov 29th with 96% support (final vote tally was 389-15) and is now pending action in the Senate where it will be subjected to further amendments.
Despite being considered a small bill, H.R. 3012 is a major immigration overhaul that makes the employment-based immigration system of the United States work on a first-come first-serve basis. Currently, the system allocates green-cards each year by limiting green-card numbers on a per-country basis. This causes individuals from two countries--India and China--to wait at different times even when they have the same type of job and the same qualifications. The bill solves this problem by removing the per-country limits, but unfortunately, without adding any new visas. This results in taking scarce existing visas from people who have already been waiting for a long time in the green-card queues and giving them to others who experience even longer wait times.
The problem with this approach is that should H.R. 3012 become law a large number of employment-based immigrant visas will be redistributed from one group to another in a very short period of time with severe humanitarian consequences. Even though immigrants from India and China wait the longest to receive a green-card, there are also thousands of other immigrants in the third employment-based category who come from 194 different countries and who experience wait times of six to seven years on average. Those of them who are due to receive their green-cards in the coming months will be severely prejudiced by H.R. 3012. In a matter of weeks, thousands of people will face unexpected increased wait times of five to six more years leading them to suffer severe financial losses, lose job offers and career opportunities, or fall out of status.
H.R. 3012 recognizes these problems and attempts to offer a solution in the form of a transition, which unfortunately, is quite inadequate. The transition rules of H.R. 3012 provide for a three-year transition period, which starts with a 15% allocation for all 194 countries of the world reserving 85% of all visas to nationals of India and China in the first year. In the second and third year, India and China are allocated 90% of all visas, leaving only 10% to the rest of the world. Since these numbers are quite unbalanced, the resulting transition period itself is extremely abrupt and does very little to protect high-skilled immigrants. Furthermore, the bill's retroactive effective date of October 1, 2011 practically erases the first year of the transition period, since visas numbers in FY 2012 are already exhausted.
To solve all these problems and to protect high-skilled immigrant
I am writing to request your support to amend H.R. 3012 (Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act) by making the bill's transition periods fairer and more predictable to high-skilled immigrants who are currently waiting for employment-based immigrant visas.
This bill passed the US House of Representatives on Nov 29th with 96% support (final vote tally was 389-15) and is now pending action in the Senate where it will be subjected to further amendments.
Despite being considered a small bill, H.R. 3012 is a major immigration overhaul that makes the employment-based immigration system of the United States work on a first-come first-serve basis. Currently, the system allocates green-cards each year by limiting green-card numbers on a per-country basis. This causes individuals from two countries--India and China--to wait at different times even when they have the same type of job and the same qualifications. The bill solves this problem by removing the per-country limits, but unfortunately, without adding any new visas. This results in taking scarce existing visas from people who have already been waiting for a long time in the green-card queues and giving them to others who experience even longer wait times.
The problem with this approach is that should H.R. 3012 become law a large number of employment-based immigrant visas will be redistributed from one group to another in a very short period of time with severe humanitarian consequences. Even though immigrants from India and China wait the longest to receive a green-card, there are also thousands of other immigrants in the third employment-based category who come from 194 different countries and who experience wait times of six to seven years on average. Those of them who are due to receive their green-cards in the coming months will be severely prejudiced by H.R. 3012. In a matter of weeks, thousands of people will face unexpected increased wait times of five to six more years leading them to suffer severe financial losses, lose job offers and career opportunities, or fall out of status.
H.R. 3012 recognizes these problems and attempts to offer a solution in the form of a transition, which unfortunately, is quite inadequate. The transition rules of H.R. 3012 provide for a three-year transition period, which starts with a 15% allocation for all 194 countries of the world reserving 85% of all visas to nationals of India and China in the first year. In the second and third year, India and China are allocated 90% of all visas, leaving only 10% to the rest of the world. Since these numbers are quite unbalanced, the resulting transition period itself is extremely abrupt and does very little to protect high-skilled immigrants. Furthermore, the bill's retroactive effective date of October 1, 2011 practically erases the first year of the transition period, since visas numbers in FY 2012 are already exhausted.
To solve all these problems and to protect high-skilled immigrant
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