Thread by @doug_rand

President Biden's immigration bill includes not only a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, smart border policies, & humane treatment of refugees—it also promises major & long-overdue improvements to our skills-based immigration system...

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cnbc.com/2021/02/18/imm…

Let's start with the broken status quo: Lots of talented people want to be in the US—not as temporary workers, but as permanent residents with green cards, & ultimately US citizens.

But there aren't enough employment-based green cards.

The official cap is 140,000/year, but…
2/

…people have families, turns out, so ~70k green cards go to employer-sponsored workers, & ~70k go to their spouses & children.

This compels many future Americans to use a somewhat-less-scarce *temporary* work visa, like the H-1B, while waiting for a green card.

3/

This is especially intolerable for people from populous countries, because there's a bottleneck within the bottleneck: No country can represent >7% of the green cards.

So instead of one queue, currently there's a bewildering 13 queues:

4/
travel.state.gov/content/travel…

The bottleneck for Indian nationals with advanced degrees is so restrictive that the expected wait for someone getting on the green card line today is 150 years—in other words, never.

(via @David_J_Bier:)
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cato.org/blog/150-year-…

Working on an H-1B while waiting years for a green card is full of perils:

If your employer is abusive, you're stuck. You don't want to lose your job & your place in line.

If your kid turns 21 before you get your green cards, they lose their status.

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forbes.com/sites/stuartan…

Until 2015, your spouse couldn't get a work permit of their own.

This got partially fixed through executive action (thanks, Obama), but that policy is still vulnerable, as Trump amply demonstrated.

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nytimes.com/2018/04/18/opi…

Now let's look at what the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 would do, now that Biden's immigration bill has been released in full.

One of the most consequential changes: spouses & children of employment-based immigrants would no longer count toward the green card cap of 140k/yr.

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The bill also eliminates country-based caps.

These two policies alone would *double* America's capacity for welcoming global talent, and with just one queue. Wait times would no longer be arbitrarily based on someone's nationality.

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There are other new pathways for global talent, too:

*No green card cap at all for US STEM PhDs (~16k/yr)

*Pilot of green cards for communities seeking talent for local economic development (10k/year)

(h/t to @InnovateEconomy @LettieriDC:)

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eig.org/heartland-visa

Also an extra 30k/year green cards for workers who didn't necessarily go to college.

It's crazy that our current system provides almost no way for a blue-collar worker to get a green card based on their skills alone.

(h/t to @JeffFlake:)

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nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opi…

So the Biden bill would greatly expand America's ability to attract global talent for the long run.

What about the ~1 million professionals already working here, facing extreme wait times for a green card?

This backlog would be swiftly eliminated...

12/
cato.org/publications/i…

The maximum wait time for employment-based green card seekers would be 10 years. This would provide instant relief for a lot of people currently stuck, plus a safety valve in case backlogs creep up again.

And the waiting itself wouldn't be nearly so bad...

13/

The Biden bill would cure some of the worst ills of working on an H-1B visa:

*All H-4 spouses & children could get work permits
*No children would "age out" of immigration status
*Automatic extension & work permit if processing times get out of hand (>1 year)

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And one more simple thing that would help a lot: International students would be able to acknowledge a long-term desire to stay in the US after graduation, without jeopardizing their student visa status. ("Dual intent" would be permitted for higher ed students on F-1 visas.)

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Will the US Citizenship Act become law?

It almost certainly commands the support of a House majority & >50 Senators, including some Republicans.

But that's not enough, given the Senate 60-vote supermajority rule.

Can a deal be struck to get those 10 GOP Senate votes?

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That's the trillion-dollar question. (Literally. This kind of immigration reform delivers a huge boost to US GDP.)

As the Congress works its will, remember that there are many paths to the President's desk.

17/17
politico.com/news/2021/01/2…