Legislation with broad bipartisan support eliminates discriminatory country-caps, reduces decades-long green card backlogs for legal immigrants, and builds protections for American workers.
Immigration Voice, a national non-profit organization with over 130,000 members that advocates for the alleviation of restrictions on employment, travel, and working conditions faced by legal high-skilled immigrants in the United States working as doctors, researchers, scientists, and engineers at many of America’s Fortune 500 companies is proud to announce the Unanimous and bipartisan passage of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 in the Senate today.
On July 10, 2019, the bill passed the House by a 365-65 margin. The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act creates a fair and equitable, “first come, first serve” system for receiving employment-based green cards, putting an end to the discriminatory quota system that has left over 1 million Indian high-skilled workers in the United States with a decades-long line while individuals from other countries face no wait time at all to receive a green card. The Senate Bill has improved upon the House bill by adding more enforcement provisions to protect American workers and encourage their hiring over foreign workers.
The lead sponsors of this bill in the Senate were Senators Mike Lee and Kamala Harris.
Aman Kapoor, the Co-Founder and President of Immigration Voice stated that: “Immigration Voice is absolutely thrilled that after 15 years of tireless effort, the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act has finally received the unanimous support of every member of the U.S. Senate. People are finally understanding that no matter what else is wrong with our immigration system, we can all agree that discrimination should never be a basis for deciding who is given access to permanent residency in the United States.
The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act is a win-win for the American people. It will grow our economy by allowing highly skilled immigrants to start their own companies and will make sure that these new companies hire American workers who are made more attractive by this bill. We are incredibly grateful to Senator Lee, our champion, and to Senators Harris, Cramer, Cotton, Collins, McSally, and many of our allies. We are confident that this will be the year the bill will pass.”
