A few days ago, the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act was passed by the House. If it’s passed by the Senate and signed by the President, it will have dramatic implications for immigrants coming to and living in the US. That prospect; though, faces challenges from a few Senators from both sides of the aisle.
Apparently, no country in the world is allowed more than 7% of the total green cards handed out by the US government every year. For workers from China and India, due to high demand, there is a current backlog of applications that it can take up to 50 years to receive the green cards.
The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act plans to eliminate the capped amount per country. Doing so will benefit high skilled workers from China and India the most, but at the expense of, well, almost everybody else from other countries. The backlog of current applications from India and China will take years to clear and after that it will mean 8-10 years for folks from low-demand countries like myself from Vietnam to get my turn.
The bill essentially seems to tackle only one problem in a myriad of problems with immigration. Hence, it is said to create other issues, per path2usa.
Senator Rand Paul introduced a different immigration bill called Backlog Elimination, Legal Immigration, and Employment Visa Enhancement Act or BELIEVE Act. The act is aimed to change immigration on a broader level and tackle more issues than the Fairness for High Skilled Immigration Act. Cato.org has a pretty good summary of what BELIEVE Act can deliver here. This is a snippet, in case you are too lazy to click and read the article
There are a couple of problems with skilled immigration that the bill doesn’t address—including the outdated H-1B limit and the burdensome and nonsensical labor certification process for employers—but overall, the legislation would make the United States far more competitive for foreign talent than current law and prevent the removal of hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. This legislation would benefit the U.S. economy enormously.
Cato.org on BELIEVE Act
Minh Quang Duong 