“Stepping Stones” Indicates Bipartisan Path for US Citizenship Act of 2021 ALL OF US Contact: Paul Donnelly, MPAG,
All of Us, the nation’s leading grassroots organization of foreign US graduate students from all over the world, strongly endorses the Biden administration’s immigration legislation: “The Biden proposal solves the backlog for merit-based immigration by rejecting the zero-sum approach of the past few years,” said Dr. Maz Rostamian, director of outreach for All of Us. “We applaud the Menendez/Sanchez legislation that eliminates the backlog promptly with MORE green cards, because that is the only way it can be done.”
All of Us (supallofus.org) is a grassroots organization with 5,000+ members from more than 60 countries, mostly graduate students conducting scientific and medical research at 200+ American universities and colleges.
This release is based on the analysis of the US Citizenship Act of 2021 and the March 2020 CRS report: “The Employment-Based Immigration Backlog.” (https://www.supallofus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CRS-Report-The-Employment-Based-Immigration-Backlog.pdf)
The US Citizenship Act of 2021 will:
- Increase the ceiling for employment-based green cards from 140,000 a year to 170,000.
- End the unnecessary practice of counting dependents.
- Recapture unused green cards.
- Exempt certain high skilled immigration categories from the ceiling.
“The backlog for the three most significant skilled green card categories is roughly one million,” said Maz Rostamian. “Congress only allocates 140,000 green cards a year to these categories, yet each year 250,000 people are added to the line. That is unfair and unsustainable.”
“This legislation will deliver green cards to everyone now waiting in 1-2 years, and provide nearly 400,000 green cards for future demand so we won’t simply replace one backlog with another. As we have been saying for years, when the problem is not enough, the solution is more.”
“We especially applaud the new Administration’s openness to a stepping stone approach,” Maz Rostamian added. “This legislation is a foundation for what Congress will do with different, bipartisan majorities in Congress for specific bills. All of Us is eager to help in a way that benefits everyone. Whatever Congress does first, we urge MORE green cards for the employment-based backlogs are NEXT.”