Dear Friends,

As you might have been anticipating, Senator Lee has been working hard to work with his colleagues to get the amended S.386 to a place where it can pass the Senate. To further that effort, he has been consulting with the Senate Offices that were not consulted during the negotiations with Senator Dick Durbin. As a result, these Senate Offices have requested MINOR changes to the Durbin Amendment to accommodate concerns by Senate Democrats, Republicans, and Federal agencies like DHS. These changes were communicated to Senator Durbin’s office yesterday.

We believe that these are fair edits to the bill with changing the three-year transition period of 15%, 10%, 10% reserved for people enjoying special treatment for the “special skill” of being born in small countries to a nine-year transition period of 30%, 25%, 20%, 15%, 10%, 10%, 5%, 5%, 5% for the same people. As you can see, we made further concessions just so all sides could reach a consensus and the bill could pass.

Sadly, it seems as if instead of negotiating with Senator Lee in good faith, Senator Durbin has chosen to leak the substance of these changes to vested interests like shady immigration lawyers – who are minting obscene amounts of money by filing endless H1-B renewals – over the bodies of our members who are living as indentured servants and dying in the backlog – while widows, children, and spouses who have spent decades in America self-deport. Some lawyers are now attacking the minor changes necessary to get #S386 done.

We will not be fooled – minor changes should not derail a bill that ends inequality, injustice, and racism in our immigration law. People who claim to be for immigrants who oppose the bill because of changes made for administration purposes are showing they are truly for-profit racists.

If Senator Durbin does not negotiate in good faith regarding administrative changes requested by Senate offices that were not in the room when he made changes to the bill, we will hold Senator Durbin accountable for killing the bill. As we announced in our message dated 2nd October 2019, we have known Senator Durbin’s prejudice towards Indian immigrants all along. We know that he did not add his amendment as a good-faith effort, but rather, he injected the poison pill into the bill. And his actions are proving us right, and the whole world will witness that Senator Dick Durbin is nothing but a racist who wants the systematic ethnic cleansing of Indian immigrants from the United States. We ask Senator Durbin to not ask Doctors to serve on the front lines to save lives in America if he doesn’t acknowledge their basic humanity.

In order to combat any misinformation and rumors being spread by lawyers, racists, and other vested interests, we have no choice now but to release to you the latest amendment, so you can see for yourself how minor these changes are: S.386 Working Draft Feb2020

In the near future, we will find out if we were right all along about Senator Durbin (as described in our Facebook post dated October 2nd or if Senator Durbin will live up to his own words in the speech he made on December 18th – when he promised to work in good faith to get #S386 done.

Please be prepared to follow all action items diligently and precisely. Do no more and no less than we request of you.

Immigration Voice