Written by: Sarah Johnson | December 5, 2020

By: Sarah Johnson

In March of 2019, we wrote a piece about the most recently proposed the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. This week, we saw action on the legislation in the Senate after more than a year. Let’s look into what happened and where this important issue currently stands.

The House passed US HR1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, on July 10th, 2019 with a 365-65 vote. In September of 2019, the Senate referred the bill to the Committee on the Judiciary, where it has been sitting until last week. Over the last year year, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has attempted to pass the bill on “unanimous consent”. “Unanimous consent” is usually used to expedite the course of legislation because it allows for legislators to bypass quorum calls, approve routine bills, and activate unanimous consent agreements. When a unanimous consent method is used, any legislator can object to the request, which in turn triggers debate prior to any further consideration. For HR 1044, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Rand Paul (R-KY), David Purdue (R-GA), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) all objected to the request, which lead to amendments to the legislation.

The version the Senate ended up with after input from the aforementioned Senators is now considerably different from the version the House passed last year. The bill’s primary purpose is to phase out employment-based per county limits on green cards and increase the per-country caps for family-sponsored green cards – see a better summary of the original legislation breakdown in the blog from last year.

The main goals are still the same, but the timelines and implementation aspects differ. If the Senate bill clears the House with the new adjustments, it will facilitate the removal of the massive backlog of Indian IT professionals working in the US – the backlog for an Indian national to get permanent residency or Green Card is currently more than 195 years.

The CATO Institute has a great breakdown on the differences between the two pieces of legislation, what the legislation as it stands aims to do, and some interesting insight. Here are some of the highlights of the differences:

  • The House bill would take effect immediately, the Senate bill would take effect on October 1, 2022
  • The House bill has a 3-year phaseout of these country limit green cards, the Senate bill increased this to an 11-year phase out
  • During its 3-year phase out, the House Bill would reserve 15% of EB-2 and EB-3 visas for countries not affected by the backlog (known as “Rest of World” (ROW) applicants, or countries other than India and China). In years two and three, they would set aside 10% of EB-2 and EB-3 visas for ROW applicants. Starting the fourth year, the USCIS would distribute all visas on a first come, first served basis.
    • The Senate Bill the bill guarantees ROW a defined percentage of the green cards for 9 years: year 1 (30%), year 2 (25%), year 3 (20%), year 4 (15%), years 5 and 6 (10%), and years 7 through 9 (5%). The bill also stipulates that no more than 25 percent of these “reserved” green cards can go to immigrants from any single country. No more than 85 percent of the other “unreserved” green cards can go to a single country
  • The Senate bill introduced a new item which allocates 11% of available EEB-3 green-cards to “shortage occupation” (listed as nurses and physical therapists) for 7 years
  • The Senate bill also introduced new language requiring the DHS to “not adjust status of any alien affiliated with the military forces of the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party”

Immediately after the Senate bill’s passage, House Representative Zoe Lofgren, (D-CA), who sponsored the House bill and is the chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, tweeted she would not support the Senate’s version of the bill.

 

 

One thing is clear, the reform aimed at with this legislation is clearly needed. We should have a more merit-based system to level the playing field for high-skilled immigrants and stop the conditioning of green cards and a pathway to citizenship based solely on the applicant’s country of origin. I am interested to see where this legislation ends up.

Cover Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

 

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