from All of Us
to Immigration Voice
You have been misled.
For a dozen years now, you have had thousands of meetings and phone calls with Senators and Congressmen and the media. You have been told to communicate the message that passing legislation to repeal the per-country cap is the best way to help those stuck in the backlog for employment-based green cards.
That’s not true.
As has also been true in the past, there is now legislation in Congress that would actually solve the backlog. Senator Richard Durbin has a bill (S. 1744) which would provide green cards to all foreign students with advanced degrees in STEM fields – that increase would provide green cards to eliminate the backlog. Senator Rand Paul’s bill (S. 2091) will repeal the per-country cap and quadruple employment-based green cards – so everyone now in the backlog would have green cards in less than two years.
Both HR 1044 and S 386 will make the backlogs worse.
It’s simple math: there are 120,120 green cards in the categories known as priority workers (EB-1), advanced degrees (EB-2), and skilled workers (EB-3). There are already 750,000 people in line, approved and waiting: nobody knows better than you that Indians in EB-2 face a minimum of 10 years. Each year, we add 250,000 more people to the line.
A pie doesn’t get bigger when anyone gets a larger slice. From 2023 to at least 2029, the rest of the world will get ZERO green cards in the advanced degree category – including China. Yet it won’t eliminate the backlog – of the 33.5k Chinese now waiting in EB-2, 25k will still be waiting in 2029.
The per-country bills won’t even help many Indians – and not for long.
In 2018, there were 4,096 Indians who got green cards in EB-2, which means roughly 36,000 went to people from China and other countries. That number will remain about the same during the first year of the transition under the “hold harmless” provision. In the next 2 years of the transition, the Indian share would increase to nearly 30,000, and thereafter India will get all 40,040 until at least 2029.
Even then, more than half of the current EB-2 backlog of over 433,000 Indians will still be waiting for green cards, while another 450,000 or more Indians have joined the queue along with an equal number from the rest of the world.
The backlog gets bigger, not smaller.
You have been making enemies faster than you’ve found allies.
Tech employers have given you advice which serves their interests – as your employers — not your interests, as people who want more green cards, faster. They have told you green card distribution discriminates against India – yet in the three main categories (EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3), over the last ten years India has gotten 280,523 green cards; China, 130,248; South Korea 115,274, and the Philippines 84,792.
That’s not a distribution of green cards biased against people born in India. Because they don’t increase green cards, HR 1044 and S 386 will choke off green cards for health care and medical research, as well as skilled immigration from Africa, Mexico, South Korea, all of Europe and many other source countries. That fact isn’t well-known – but it won’t stay that way.
So your strategist Leon Fresco urges you to go after people like All of Us with ugly and untrue attacks: “All of our opponents can be lumped into one of two categories, very simple. Either you are an ethno-racist … Or you are what I would call a for-profit racist…[no one] is going to be able to survive the scrutiny that we are going to bring.”
We want what you want: more green cards, faster.
Work with us, not against us. Stop calling us names. Unite with skilled people from all over the world who want the American immigration system to work better, for everybody.