H.R.1044: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Passes the House with 365 Yes votes!

After an open and spirited debate (where the only opposition was procedural) Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren and Ranking Member, Ken Buck’s H.R.1044 – The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act passed the house with an overwhelming 365 members voting in favor of the bill.

We are incredibly grateful to Chairwoman Lofgren who has been championing this bill since 2008 and Ranking Member Ken Buck who has been a champion of this commonsense bill since he first heard of it.

Voting under Suspension of the Rules is typically used for commonsensical broadly supported bipartisan legislation and H.R.1044-Fairness For High Skilled Immigrants Act certainly qualifies!

Today’s vote is the culmination of over a decade of work by hundreds of thousands of Immigration Voice volunteers and a testament to the fair-mindedness of our elected leaders in Congress, not to mention the leadership of Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren and Ranking Member Ken Buck.

“The House just passed my bipartisan bill, introduced with Representative Ken Buck, to make America’s immigration system fairer for high-skilled immigrants legally working in the United States.

In order for American industries to remain competitive and create more jobs, they must be able to recruit and retain the best talent in the world. This becomes increasingly difficult when workers from high-population countries must compete for the same limited number of visas as workers from low population countries. Our bill, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, would phase-in a visa system where the applicant’s nationality is irrelevant, providing relief to individuals who’ve waited patiently for a green card for years, if not decades, while they continue to work and contribute to our economy.

This legislation has widespread support across both parties…..”

~ From Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren’s floor remarks on this historic occasion.

This news provides much-needed solace to our members after Senator Rand Paul blocked Senator Lee’s attempts to pass the Fairness bill under Unanimous Consent in the Senate on June 27, 2019.