Dear Friends,

We have been told by our members that malicious misinformation about the bill H.R.392 – The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is being deliberately spread around the community and more worryingly, in Congress. We believe this misinformation is being peddled by the same group of partisan religious bigots that we warned you about in our last note.

The rumors and misinformation being spread around by these groups are doing tremendous damage to the prospects and support for our bill. Some of the rumors and misinformation being spread about H.R.392 are:

  1. H.R.392 is designed (or should be designed) to benefit Hindu (Indian) Green Card Applicants only.
  2. Somewhat contradictorily, H.R.392 does not have enough benefit for Indian Green Card Applicants because the wait time after the bill is passed will be 68 years (look at the images in this post)
  3. H.R.392 only has 88 votes.
  4. H.R.392 will not benefit kids who are aging out of the system.
  5. Amending H.R.392 to add more Green Cards (directly or indirectly) will not affect the prospects of H.R.392 passing.

Additionally, these groups have been claiming credit for killing the last Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill S.744, and attacking the few allies we have like our consultant Leon Fresco.

Given the damage this group is already doing to H.R.392 and the further damage we expect this group to do in the coming days with their activities, we feel it is essential to publish this note – to remind our members where the facts lie, while asking them – not to affiliate, attend, or otherwise support events or meetings facilitated by groups that either have partisan names or partisan objectives or, seek to advance any legislation other than H.R.392.

Rumor 1: H.R.392 is designed (or should be designed) to benefit Hindu (Indian) Green Card Applicants only.

Fact: Congress has no need or intention to pass a bill to benefit Indians or any other nationality or a particular religion for that matter. Congress does however have a very strong incentive to pass a bill to modernize and streamline the employment-based green card system. The current employment-based green card system is unpredictable and discriminatory. No one knows when they will receive a green card and the most important predictor of when an immigrant in a given category will receive a green card is the immigrant’s country of birth – which is fundamentally discriminatory. H.R.392 minimizes and simplifies the wait times for employment-based Green Cards while giving businesses the freedom to sponsor talented people without regard to their country of birth. It just so happens that because of the skills currently in demand in the United States and a large number of people in India with these skills (in conjunction with the current discriminatory per-country caps on employment-based green cards), Indians face the longest wait times. This is not a bill designed to benefit Indian green card applicants. If the skills required by the economy change and the potential immigrants with the skills happen to be born in a country other than India, then immigrants from the country other than India will earn their place in a fair first-come-first-serve non-discriminatory employment-based green card queue.

Rumor 2: Somewhat contradictorily, H.R.392 does not have enough benefit for Indian Green Card Applicants because the wait time after the bill is passed will be 68 years (look at the images in this post):

Fact: If you look at the images of the “Calculator” produced by the syndicate of bigots and “consulting” companies, you will see that they are claiming that H.R.392 effectively has a per-country cap of 25% of employment-based green cards for the most backlogged country and they do some bogus calculations to show that the wait time for Indians will be 68 years after the bill is passed. This syndicate has been regularly showing these statistics to members of Congress at the highest levels for the last few weeks in order to undercut the support behind H.R.392 (and worryingly might have convinced some of them that H.R.392 is a bad bill). The facts are, after H.R.392 is passed the following green card numbers will become first-come-first-serve and be used for backlog elimination – regardless of the beneficiaries country of origin:

  • Year 1 after passage: 100% of EB1 + 85% of 85% (i.e. 72.0%) of EB2 & EB3.
  • Year 2 after passage: 100% of EB1 + 85% of 90% (i.e. 76.5%) of EB2 & EB3.
  • Year 3 after passage: 100% of EB1 + 85% of 90% (i.e. 76.5%) of EB2 & EB3.
  • Year 4 onwards – 100% of all EB categories (fair non-discriminatory first-come-first-serve)

“Calculator” distributed by a syndicate of Bigots and Consulting Companies to the most important members of Congress. We are still trying to figure out how much damage was done to H.R.392.

To be honest, while we expected some shenanigans from this syndicate of consulting companies and religious bigots, we never in our wildest dreams, expected them to come out with fake data and for them to spend weeks showing this data to the most important members of Congress in order to sabotage H.R.392.

If you are someone who does not believe Immigration Voice, and you are only interested in how H.R.392 benefits Indians (who happen to be waiting for the longest in the discriminatory green card queues), maybe you should listen to someone who opposes this bill and says “India would get nearly 100 percent of employment-based green cards for a time, eventually stabilizing at around 75 percent.“

Rumor 3: H.R.392 only has 88 votes.

Fact: H.R.392 has 319 co-sponsors. Co-sponsorship is a level of commitment higher than merely voting for a bill. When a member co-sponsors a bill, they are not only committing to vote for the bill when it comes up for a vote, they are committing to work positively towards getting the bill done. It is virtually unheard of for a member to vote against a bill that they have co-sponsored. Additionally, in 2011, when H.R. 392 was H.R.3012 – the bill passed the House by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 389-15 votes. Of the 15 “nay” votes that voted against our bill back then, two (2) actually became Cosponsors of H.R.392, and several are no longer in Congress. Additionally and very significantly, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte was gracious enough to announce publicly on multiple occasions that H.R.392 was added to the SAFA Act because adding our bill adds support to the Chairman’s bill.

Anyone suggesting that H.R.392 has just 88 votes in the House is completely wrong and such a person or group, in our view, has lost all credibility on this topic. Everyone should wonder about the ulterior motives of people who peddle narratives that are so easily debunked.

Rumor 4: H.R.392 will not benefit kids who are aging out of the system.

Fact: Of course H.R.392 has a solution for aging-out children. Any group spreading these rumors may not understand the people who will be getting Green Cards the first will be the longest waiting applicants, which are the ones most likely to have kids who are about to age-out. Over time, no kids will age out because of 5-6 years green card lines, unless an H-1B comes with a kid who is 16-years old, which is very rare.

Rumor 5: Amending H.R.392 to add more Green Cards (directly or indirectly) will not affect the prospects of H.R.392 passing.

Fact: Adding provisions like exempting dependents or recapture or more green cards to the bill H.R.392, will make it inevitable that the bill will be killed because “the bill is too big and can only be done in comprehensive immigration reform”. A narrow bill H.R.392 was invented to overcome this concern, and it is the most that can be done on a standalone basis. If you expand the bill H.R.392, you will lose the support of some Republican Cosponsors who are immigration restrictionists, and you will lose any hope of Democratic support to move forward outside of Comprehensive Immigration Reform because Congress will never enact a “comprehensive Indian solution” without helping the other communities who need help.

S.744 – The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (The last Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill) removed Per-Country limits, added 3 times more employment-based green cards, allowed for recapture, and allowed H4 spouses to work along with many other pro-immigrant fixes. It also had several restrictions on fraud and abuse that these shady consulting companies thrive on. When leaders of this syndicate of bigots and consulting companies boast about killing S.744, that should tell you that their interests are aligned with shady consulting companies. Shady consulting companies have the most to lose if H.R.392 passes because when the backlog starts clearing, their most senior and lucrative talent will not need visa sponsorship anymore.

In the coming months, we will have a narrow window of opportunity to pass bill H.R.392. So, it will either be bill H.R.392 or nothing at all. We ask that folks to be smart and wise about making their choice.

In closing, we are very thankful to Leon Fresco for helping us with our efforts. He is helping our cause because he believes this cause to be just and right. He gets a lot of grief from Democrats for not working on comprehensive immigration reform issues, from Republicans who want him to work on pro-business issues, and from our folks who want the bill to pass yesterday. If we attack our non-Indian allies, no one will ever want to help us. This may be what some of the fringe groups want, but it is not what any sane person would want.

Immigration Voice

PS: Once again, we strongly urge our members not to affiliate, attend, or otherwise support events or meetings facilitated by groups that either have partisan names or partisan objectives or, seek to advance any legislation other than H.R.392.