
Originally Posted by
imdeng
Just sent the emails as well as printed letters. I request other readers to also spend the $9-$12 and send a printed letter - thousands of letters have a lot more impact than easily ignorable emails. I edited the letter a bit - my version is below:
Dear Mr. President and Members of Congress,
We are legal immigrants living in USA 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 the 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 the 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, start businesses and contribute to the economy.
1) Remove the artificial cap on Employment Based (EB) Green Cards.
An artificial cap of 140,000 EB visas exists today. If an employer proves that a certain skill is lacking in US economy and accordingly hires a suitable foreign person then it doesn’t make sense to subject that skill to an artificial quota. This constraint is hurting the employers who wish to get the best science and technology talent from around the world to support innovation within the US. Our legal immigration policy should be oriented towards getting the best human capital to help our economy, but because of this artificial cap, much of the legal immigration is wasted on family based green cards and diversity lottery visas that add little to the economy.
2) Remove the per country limits
Per country quotas of 7% exists today. It is ridiculous to think that we are willing to accept only as many legal immigrants from India and China as from say Fiji and Panama. Because of this artificial limit, many legal immigrants from India, China, Mexico and Philippines are subjected to inhumane wait of more than 10-12 years for a visa. More than 100,000 students from India and China graduate from US universities every year with advanced degrees - and there are only about 20,000 visas available to absorb them in the US economy. We are effectively forcing this well educated workforce to go back to India and China and use their excellent US based education to compete against the US. In fact, as spouse and children are also counted in the visa limit, considering 4 members per family, on an average only 2500 Indian applicants get Green cards in a year.
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 60,000 true skilled workers to enter the workforce every year.
4) Capture Wasted Visas from Prior Years
In the last 17 years 218,000 EB visas have been wasted because of processing delays between USCIS and DOS. If those visas were re-captured and used, the decades of waiting that legal immigrants are forced to endure 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 the President to help the productive, tax paying and patriotic legal immigrants community. We are here because we believe in America and the American Dream. We are being held back by the archaic and counter-productive legal immigration regulations. Above are few suggestions from us, and we request you consider legislation action on the above so that we can contribute even better to the growth and prosperity of this country.
Thank you