New IV Feature : Weekly Attorney Chat | Read More

Washington State Chapter Conference Call on Nov 9th at 7 pm | Read More

IV action item - Write to USCIS on recent spate of I485 denials in AC21 cases. | Read More

US Housing Crisis and Employment based Green Card issues | Read More

IV Chat | Read More | IV Blogs | Read More

Action Item: Call Lawmakers Campaign HR 5882, HR 5921 & HR 6039 |  Read More | Give me High Five Campaign | Open letter to Congress by  Industry Leaders | Update HR5882 | Call Call Call

FREE answers to questions from an Immigration Lawyer | Read more

5/16/2008: Action Item: HR 5882, HR 5921 & HR 6039 |  Read More

5/16/2008: Update: Murry amendment passes by Voice vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee | Read More

5/13/2008: Update: HR 6039 introduced to exempt STEM degree applicants from numerical limits | Read More

5/2/2008: Update Administrative Fix | Read More

4/30/2008: Update: HR 5921 Introduced to eliminate per country limits | Read More | Support  Bills to address EB backlog | Campaign Flyers | More Flyers

4/24/2008 : Bi-partisan bill introduced to recapture unused EB numbers | Read More | Support Recapture of Visas

4/6/2008 : Announcing the launch of Team IV | Read More

3/29/2008 : IV Tracker Feature added to Main Menu. For more information see : IV Tracker

3/28/2008 : Successful Campaign for Administrative fixes | Read More

3/26/2008 : Administrative Fixes Update | March 26, 2008 update  | Read More about the campaign | Track

2/6/2008 : Name check not required for I-485 approval if pending >180 days | Read More

1/9/2008 : Express your support for Immigration Voice | Read More

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FREE EB Immigration Advice from a Lawyer | Read more | Hear the Recording

 >>>>Additional News items, archives, past announcements...  

The issue of Immigration Voice, in a nutshell   

1. Green Card Delays :

The Employment based green card system is completely broken due to excessive delays and backlogs in petitions of nearly half a million highly skilled workers who are certified by US Government to be doing a job that no US citizen is willing, qualified or able to do. The delays in obtained permanent residency are due to 2 reasons: Numerical caps on employment-based green cards and processing delays in adjudication of files. Today the system takes anywhere between 6-12 years to grant Green cards to some of the best and brightest of the world who have chosen America as their future home. 

These future Americans are facing huge quality of life issues and their employers are facing difficulty in attracting more of the best and brightest of the world due to the broken system. The system prevents these workers from accepting promotions and switching jobs for the time-period it takes to process their files. By stagnating career growth and suffocating the creativity of the most innovative and technical minds of the world, America is creating a class of future Americans, who would see no career growth for 6-12 years and making under-achievers of these individuals.

The pressure on these individuals to go back to their home countries are increasingly each day as many world economies, especially India and China are booming and they also happen to be the country of origin of more than half of these skilled foreign-born workforce. If America delays reform of the broken system of employment based immigration, the pressure on these individuals to go back would neutralize the incentive to wait here and tough it out with the broken system. It would result in a reverse brain drain where the talent and human capital flows from developed west to the burgeoning Asian economies. The reverse brain drain would exacerbate the effects of overseas outsourcing on economy. These future Americans have waited for reform for more than 2 years but congress hasn’t reformed the system yet. The fight for the best and brightest in the world is America’s to lose.   

2. The Discriminatory Per-Country Rationing of Green Cards That Exacerbates the Delays :

Today, the employment based skilled immigrants face more backlogs if they are from India, China, Mexico or Philippines than what backlogs they would face if they were born anywhere but these 4 countries. This is due to the fact that green cards from the annual quota are rationed at 7% per country. Unused visas from the remaining countries that don’t use the 7% allocated visas are mostly never allotted to these 4 countries that have the highest number of scientists, engineers and technology workers willing to make America their future home. It is discriminatory to have laws that subject immigrants from 4 nations to more backlogs and the resulting hardship from such backlogs.

America has had per-country ceilings since decades on family based and diversity-lottery based visas and it makes sense to have uniform distribution of visas to countries where the basis for immigration is family relationship and family reunification. However, the employment based immigration is driven by employer petitions filed by employers who want the retain the employee and facilitate employee retention based on skills, knowledge, education and talent. Employability has nothing to do with country of birth. We do not allow employers to discriminate hiring based on their nationality or country of origin. Therefore, the employment-based immigration, which is a derivative benefit of employment, should also be free from rationing based on nationality or country of birth.

Highly Skilled Future Americans and American Competitiveness

Skilled workers are a small minority of U.S. legal immigrants. Of the 940,000 legal immigrants in 2004, only 16% were skilled employment-based immigrants. About 40% of these skilled immigrants had advanced degrees, or 5 or more years of experience after a baccalaureate degree. The impact of these workers’ contributions to American competitiveness belies their small number. They add to the process of scientific discovery, technology development, and innovation, which in turn leads to greater productivity growth. Greater productivity growth improves the standard of living for the U.S. population as a whole. Skilled immigrants not only contribute to the innovation process themselves, they also help train our own future innovators, thus ensuring the competitiveness of future generations.   

Read chapter 2 of the February 2006 Economic Report of the President to learn more about the role of skilled immigrants in the U.S. economy.

Immigration Voice is a non-profit organization (501 (c) (4)) working to alleviate the problems faced by legal high-skilled foreign workers in the United States. We act as an interface between this set of immigrants and the legislative and executive branches of the government.

The mission of Immigration Voice is to organize grassroots efforts and resources to solve several problems in the employment based green card process including (a) delays due to Retrogression (visa number unavailability for certain employment-based categories) (b) delays due to USCIS processing backlogs and (c) delays due to Labor Certification backlogs.  We will work to remove these and other flaws by supporting changes to immigration law for high-skilled legal employment-based immigrants. High-skilled legal immigrants strengthen the United States' economy and help maintain American technological superiority.

Immigration Voice has hired Patton Boggs, a top public affairs firm, to help us reach our goals. Patton Boggs brings a bipartisan, multi-disciplinary approach to helping clients tackle public affairs challenges. The firm’s government relations and communications professionals have a strong understanding of the White House, the U.S. Congress, Senate, Federal agencies, advocacy groups and the media. The firm and its members are consistently recognized as among Washington's most influential and effective by various publications. 

Immigration Voice is a completely voluntary organization. All of our volunteers are unpaid. All monies collected by Immigration Voice go towards grassroots efforts and obtaining advice from our strategic counsel Patton Boggs. As a 501(c)(4) organization, Immigration Voice is obligated to file tax returns with the IRS and have its accounts audited by a CPA. We have appointed Raj Patel, CPA, LLC located in Iselin, NJ, as our auditor.