Immigration Voice

Immigration Voice is a non-profit organization working to alleviate problems faced by legal high-skilled foreign workers in the United States.

Immigration Voice organizes grassroots efforts and resources to solve several problems in the employment based green card process in the US. Some of the key problems include
*delays due to retrogression (visa number unavailability for certain employment-based categories).
*delays due to USCIS processing backlogs.
*delays due to Labor Certification backlogs.

Immigration Voice works to remove these and other flaws by supporting changes to immigration law for high-skilled legal employment-based immigrants.

Problems with current Employment-based immigration process

In 2004, only 16% of legal immigrants to the US were high-skilled immigrants as compared to more than 60% for Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Almost half of these high-skilled immigrants had graduate degrees from US universities. High-skilled legal immigrants strengthen the United States' economy (pay taxes, buy consumer durables, homes etc.) and help maintain American technological superiority.

The current employment-based immigration system is based on outdated quotas for country of origin. This means that each country has a fixed and equal quota of immigrant visa numbers. Therefore a tiny country like Barbados has the same quota as India or China, which supply far more of the high-skilled immigrants. This results in applicants from these “under subscribed” countries getting their green cards almost immediately whereas applicants from “over subscribed” countries like India and China have to wait anywhere from 4-10 years for the same. While the quota system makes sense in family-based immigration, it does not account for world distribution of skills or industry needs. Industry needs high-skilled workers based on their skills and not country of origin.

Dependents of employment-based applicants count against the annual, per-country visa numbers cap. This means that with the total annual, employment-based quota of 140000, only about 67000 primary applicants are eligible. The per-country limit of 7% of the above quota means this number reduces even further for applicants from India and China.

External links

* [http://immigrationvoice.org/ Immigration Voice]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_lede.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1196175687-IIcoSpg/kNnUzPnIVys+xw The New York Times: The Other Immigration]
* [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2007/db20070718_012859.htm BusinessWeek: How Skilled Immigrants Found a Voice]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/18/AR2007091801944.html The Washington Post: Legal but in Limbo, Skilled Immigrants Rally for Change]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/us/18visa.html The New York Times: US Agency Is Swamped by Requests for Visas]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071002055.html The Washington Post: A Gift From Gandhi]
* [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2007/db20070917_552357.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives BusinessWeek: Skilled Immigrants' March on Washington]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7002296.stm BBC News: Skilled immigrants suffer US limbo]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/us/11visa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The New York Times: A Floral Protest over Job-Based Visas]
* [http://www.ibnlive.com/news/immigrants-refused-green-cards-take-to-gandhigiri/44667-2.html IBN Live: Immigrants refused green cards take to Gandhigiri]
* [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Green_card_hopefuls_to_resort_to_Gandhigiri/articleshow/2183334.cms The Times Of India: Green Card Hopefuls resort to Gandhigiri]