At a high level this bill eliminated the per country cap of 7% in the employment based category. The argument being "Is it fair to award 7% of the visas to larger population countries such as India & China compared to country such as Ireland?" If this bill is passed then it slightly reduces the immigration backlog for applicants from India & China but significantly worsens it for applicants from all other countries.
Let's look into some areas that the bill does not address:
- In 2010 49,087 of visas of the 148,343 immigrant visas granted in the employment based categories were awarded to applicants born in either India or China. This accounts for ~33% of the total EB visas granted. Applicants from India alone were granted ~20% of the visas and not the 7% as stated (http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2010/ois_yb_2010.pdf)
- An argument in favor of this bill is that this bill helps America's competitiveness by attracting skilled labor. But is it really about skilled labor or cheap labor? Is there a conclusive study which proves that this change will make America more competitive in the global economic space?
- A recent survey (http://topics.dallasnews.com/article/04GS8O506kfDn?q=Europe) shows that Indian IT companies ranked amongst the world's lowest paying employers. On an average Indian IT companies paid $36,120 & a Swiss IT company paid a similar employee $167,8902. In view of this data one cannot help but wonder if this is about attracting high skilled workers and not just low cost labor. Shouldn't we address the root cause of the problem and help prevent American businesses from outsourcing the jobs to low paying countries?
- The employment based category also includes immigrants with as little as 2 years of experience who may not have a college degree. This bill will surely facilitate the clogging of the immigrant applicants in this category?
- The Department of State website indicates that these 7% caps are implemented to prevent the monopolization of visas by applicants from a single country. This is similar to antitrust regulations that protect the interests of small businesses and consumers. This bill is a repudiation of this principle. What provisions will be added to prevent monopolization of immigration in the future?
- It was mentioned in the House that companies need to wait long to hire graduates from countries with a high population, however the temporary worker program, commonly known as the H1B program, was implemented to overcome that limitation and has been highly successful in recruiting graduates/skilled professionals from any country, a major portion of these visas are granted to applicants from India and China.
- This bill is one that makes fundamental changes to current immigration queues, yet it takes effect immediately upon passage. USCIS is not given any time to study the impact of the bill, nor time to draft and implement new guidance and regulations for immigration adjudicators. Such immediate implementation without time to put into place the detailed regulations necessary to ensure a smooth transition will likely lead to chaos for some time to come.
- Lastly, how will this bill deal with people who already started their immigration petition before this law will be implemented?
In full disclosure, we all do have a dog in this fight but, all we are asking is to do the "right thing" for all US Citizens, potential Immigrants & America's businesses, as only united we can make America even more competitive & continue to be the world leader.
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On a closing note, we would like to again state that we are not against this bill in principle, but are requesting a detailed study and debate before it is implemented. As the butterfly effect theory states that small changes can result in a big impact. Let's make sure that this small change doesn't make a big negative impact by duly debating and studying the change.
