Dear Senator Corker,

Hope you are well. By now you might have received a lot of correspondence in favor of Bill

HR.3012 & S.1857. If that is the case then it is easy for you to imagine how the passing of this

bill will skew the future immigration landscape as duly noted by Senator Grassley. I humbly

request you to look into Senator Grassley’s position on this bill.

Nonetheless here is some additional information that you might consider useful when looking

considering your stand on these two bills. We are a small potential legal immigrant group trying

to work our way through a system. Please feel free to visit our blog to understand our issue at

this time <www.skilledimmigrant.blogspot.com>

On November 29th the House of Representatives passed the bill HR 3012 titled "The Fairness

for High Skilled Immigrants Act". While the intentions of the legislators behind this bill are

commendable, when one looks at the bill in detail it raises troubling questions. It also highlights

a few gaps that have not been addressed by this bill. Similar bill S. 1857 is pending in the

Senate.

At a high level this bill eliminated the per country cap of 7% in the employment based category.

The argument being "Is it fair to award 7% of the visas to larger population countries such

as India & China compared to country such as Ireland?" If this bill is passed then it slightly

reduces the immigration backlog for applicants from India & China but significantly worsens it for

applicants from all other countries.

Let's look into some areas that the bill does not address:

1. In 2010 49,087 of visas of the 148,343 immigrant visas granted in the employment

based categories were awarded to applicants born in either India or China. This

accounts for ~33% of the total EB visas granted. Applicants from India alone were

granted ~20% of the visas and not the 7% as stated (

2. An argument in favor of this bill is that this bill helps America's competitiveness by

attracting skilled labor. But is it really about skilled labor or cheap labor? Is there a

conclusive study which proves that this change will make America more competitive in

the global economic space?

3. A recent survey (

shows that Indian IT companies ranked amongst the world's lowest paying employers.

On an average Indian IT companies paid $36,120 & a Swiss IT company paid a similar

employee $167,8902. In view of this data one cannot help but wonder if this is about

attracting high skilled workers and not just low cost labor. Shouldn't we address the root

cause of the problem and help prevent American businesses from outsourcing the jobs

to low paying countries?

4. The employment based category also includes immigrants with as little as 2 years

of experience who may not have a college degree. This bill will surely facilitate the

clogging of the immigrant applicants in this category?

5. The Department of State

prevent the monopolization of visas by applicants from a single country. This is similar

to antitrust regulations that protect the interests of small businesses and consumers.

This bill is a repudiation of this principle. What provisions will be added to prevent

monopolization of immigration in the future?

6. It was mentioned in the House that companies need to wait long to hire graduates from

countries with a high population, however the temporary worker program, commonly

known as the H1B program, was implemented to overcome that limitation and has been

highly successful in recruiting graduates/skilled professionals from any country, a major

portion of these visas are granted to applicants from India and China.

7. This bill is one that makes fundamental changes to current immigration queues, yet it

takes effect immediately upon passage. USCIS is not given any time to study the impact

of the bill, nor time to draft and implement new guidance and regulations for immigration

adjudicators. Such immediate implementation without time to put into place the detailed

regulations necessary to ensure a smooth transition will likely lead to chaos for some

time to come.

8. Lastly, how will this bill deal with people who already started their immigration petition

before this law will be implemented?

In full disclosure, we all do have a dog in this fight but, all we are asking is to do the "right thing"

for all US Citizens, potential Immigrants & America's businesses, as only united we can make

America even more competitive & continue to be the world leader.

References:

On a closing note, we would like to again state that we are not against this bill in principle, but

are requesting a detailed study and debate before it is implemented. As the butterfly effect

theory states that small changes can result in a big impact. Let's make sure that this small

change doesn't make a big negative impact by duly debating and studying the change.