Will Senator Scott lift his block on S.386 and fix legal immigration?
- In Politics
- 09:54 PM, Sep 11, 2020
- Kartik Nayak
By blocking S.386, Republican Senator Rick Scott from Florida has left High skilled Indian American families, many of whom live in the state of Florida, anxious about their future. The idea of bill S.386 to remove the country of birth caps from employment-based category has been in the Senate and House for over a decade and has been part of every major comprehensive immigration reform measure. There are 35 co-sponsors for the S.386 bill including notable ones like California Senator Kamala Harris, Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate and Utah Senator Mitt Romney, Former Republican Presidential candidate. The bill has bipartisan support from 19 Republicans and 16 Democrats in the Senate. The companion bill in the House was the most popular bipartisan immigration bill to pass with 365 votes Yay votes consisting of 224 Democrats and 140 Republicans. In fact, the bill was supported overwhelmingly (21-28) by the House of Representatives from Florida including notable ones like Republican House of Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart, Gus Bilirakis, Matt Gaetz, Brian Mast and John Rutherford along with Former governor of Florida Charlie Crist.
A lot of criticism has been levelled on immigrants being responsible for low wages and job losses of American workers. As per David Bier from Cato institute – “Single best thing that Congress can do to protect native workers is to protect the rights of immigrant workers to negotiate fairly with their employers. Right now, it’s almost impossible for immigrant workers to leave their employers, so they cannot negotiate fairly for wages. They are dependent on the Government to protect them, but that hasn’t worked. If they can leave the employer to get market wage, then they won’t be paid below the market wage. But because of backlogs, employees are stuck to the employer for decades and employers continue to extend temporary status indefinitely. They cannot get a better paying job or start a business and even certain promotions are banned. America treats its highest skilled immigrants worse than its lowest skilled refugees. Therefore, many are going to other countries like Canada, Australia.” The labor market is global which means if U.S. based highly skilled immigrants are not hired in the United States, then they will be hired overseas by competitors of US companies. When the highly skilled immigrants are hired outside the United States, they take their education with them as well as the related jobs and capital investment that follows them. It also stops them from contributing to the US economy.
As Senator Scott rightly mentioned in his opinion piece in Miami Herald, about 75% of current EB visa applications are from two large countries alone. However, the number of Indian applicants vastly outnumber the Chinese. Contrary to popular belief, the applicants from India work in diverse sectors and industries from healthcare, technology, education, medical research and pharmacies to name a few. To be eligible, immigrants must have scarce skills that American companies need and could not find native workers to fill. The immigrants by filling the skill gap help these companies against global competition including China. Studies have found hiring high skilled immigrants with scarce skills allows companies to expand and create jobs for U.S. workers at all skill levels. The EB visa category constitutes only about 14% of 1 million immigrant visas that are issued annually, unlike other OECD nations where the percentage of the immigrant inflows based on employability and entrepreneurship is much higher. And since dependent family members are counted in the cap, the number of immigrant visas to primary applicants drop below 7% of 1 million. With another 7% caps per country of origin in the overall EB category, only a small number of applicants from India get permanent residence each year. As a result, the backlogs grow exponentially for Indian applicants only unlike the rest of World, and the wait times have gone past 150 years which is insane considering the working lifespan of healthy human beings is 30-40 years. In regard to concerns with loss of diversity, there is a diversity lottery of 50,000 that are issued annually to preserve diversity and since Indians apply in the Employment and Family-based category in large numbers, they are barred from applying in that category. S.386 also increases family-based country of birth caps from 7% to 15%, which helps immigrants Latin American and European countries.
The hardships that high skilled immigrants living in the US with backlogs face are not limited to lost career and business opportunities, but also unable to travel freely to native country for important life events due to visa revalidation hassles. Also, despite living in the United States legally for over a decade or more, if they lose their job, they must leave the United States with a very short grace period of 60 days. This puts tremendous stress on families as their children (many of whom are US born citizens) must leave the country during the middle of the school year with their parents. The families leave having to sell their house, car, and all their belongings in a fire-sale. And God forbid if the primary applicant passes away during the wait, the spouse and kids are forced out because the law doesn’t permit them to continue to stay here and wait. The Surviving Relative Consideration law permits a spouse to take over a dead spouse’s petition and wait in home country till the backlog clears.
As immigrants wait decades for getting immigrant visas, kids that are born outside the US are worse affected by problems related to “aging-out”. They were brought to the United States legally, as dependents, at a very young age and they grew up in the United States, attended American elementary, middle and high schools, lived thoroughly American lives and in many cases, have no memory of any other country. Under America’s dysfunctional immigration system, many thousands of young legal immigrants are forced to leave as they turn adults losing dependent status, even though they followed the rules. As Congress debates on bringing the DREAM act to legalize the provisions of DACA, it has neglected its major flaw in that it includes only those young immigrants who are here illegally, excluding children of immigrants who came to the United States and stayed legally. At an age when kids are filled with big dreams, they are fearful about their future and dejected at lost opportunities due their immigration status. They dread turning 21!
The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act would level the playing field for all immigrants who are hired based on skills irrespective of country of birth. It corrects an anomaly of having immigrants, who were hired based on skill and are already living and contributing in the US for decades, to be deprived of the opportunity to pursue American Dream to its fullest, because they have no control over where they are born. To make matters worse, the kids brought up in the US are also made to go through this cycle all over again. Status quo is not an option, it only benefits vested interests who benefit by keeping the system broken. We urge Senator Scott to lift his block on S.386 and fix legal immigration now!
Image Credits: National Review
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