Thread: "What caused the employment based green card backlog for just one country - India?"
#NoS386 #H1BAbuse #Immigration #Congress
1/ The H-1B visa program, established under the Immigration Act of 1990, was originally intended to bring foreign nationals with highly specialized and/or uncommon skills to perform specific work for a 'temporary' duration in the United States.
2/ However, this visa program has since been transformed into a conduit for the mass migration of workers who are merely run-of-the-mill/entry-level workers with nothing more than a foreign bachelor’s degree, and are actually displacing Americans from jobs.
3/ With the H-1B program being the primary feeder to the employment-based Green Card applicant pool, and with roughly 75% of all H-1B visas each year going to nationals from India, the long Green Card wait times for Indian nationals are a direct result of their over-subscription.
4/ Also, their ability to “legally” overstay the temporary visa through which they arrived in the U.S. – largely because of the AC21 statute, an Act that was passed by the Senate and signed into law by former President, Bill Clinton, allowed H-1B visa workers to stay indefinitely
5/ This created the concept of “dual intent,” wherein a foreigner applying for a non-immigrant temporary work visa could be considered to simultaneously intend to return home and intend to remain permanently in the U.S. This change had a number of entirely predictable effects.
6/ First, it transformed Green Cards into a publicly provided fringe benefit for employers to induce aliens to become guest workers. Second, it turned the labor certification process for Green Cards into a total joke. H-1B and L visas do not require the employer to prove an...
7/...American is not available for a job, but Green Cards do. Under the dual-intent system, employers have already filled the position with a guest worker before they make the Green Card petition. They now have to find a way to reject all Americans who apply for the job.
8/ Employers wouldn't be able to attract guest workers without the promise of a Green Card. Third, it created backlogs - a guest-worker visa program to flow into a Green Card program with stricter requirements & limits is like having a 4” water pipe flow into a 1” water pipe.
9/ The backlog problem was exacerbated by Indian interests taking over the H-1B program early on and developing a virtual monopoly over the program. Congress decided long ago to foster national-origin diversity in the immigration flow by limiting any one country to a maximum...
10/...of 7% of Green Cards each year (with exceptions for certain categories), but India gets about 80% of H-1B visas! By 2000, the Green Card backlog for India had reached the six-year duration of an H-1B visa.
11/ So Congress doubled down on its 1990 mistake by allowing H-1B workers to remain in that status indefinitely once they got into the Green Card queue. The entirely predictable result was even bigger Green Card backlogs for Indian nationals.
12/ So the backlogged foreign workers hired lobbyists to change the system. Now the Senate is prepared to triple down on its 1990 mistake with the grossly misnamed Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (HR 1044/S 386).This bill would remove the per-country limits on...
13/...employment-based Green Cards. It would have a number of entirely predictable effects. If this legislation passes in the Senate, & isn’t vetoed by the President, we will be on the verge of turning the legal immigration system into as big a mess as we have at our South border
14/ Imagine the screams when industries outside of high tech (which dominates H-1B) discover they can no longer get Green Cards for their foreign workers. Imagine the screams of nearly every ethnic group in the country when they discover their compatriots can no longer get GCs.
15/ The next move, as the architects have secretly orchestrated, would be for Congress to increase the number of Green Cards to try and fix the mess. This will be a short-lived solution as well, because at some point, demand for Green Cards will exceed supply.
16/ This bill calls into question the basic competence of Congress. Few people in Congress have thought through the implications of the bill. There have been no hearings on the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. There have been only Unanimous Consent votes by @SenMikeLee.
17/ He has failed 4 times trying to rush & pass this bill through a UC vote. @SenatorDurbin has been intelligent enough to outline how this bill would only favor Indians at the expense of other immigrant groups if this bill were to go into effect.
18/ Sadly, even @SenatorDurbin is looking to create another disaster by proposing an alternative bill called the "Relief Act", which would INCREASE the Green Card numbers, while also demolishing country caps. Again, this would eventually lead to another backlog situation.
End/ Congress needs to address the cause of the backlog & NOT the symptoms in order to seek a meaningful solution. As long as H-1B & L visa abuses exist, neither bills will solve anything, but instead, exacerbate the problem; harming American grads & workers in the process.
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