Washington, DC – Immigrants, lawmakers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and other concerned members of the community will hold a Summit on High-Skilled Immigration on September 8, 2012, in San Jose, California. Leaders from across the country, including Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House of Representative’s Subcommittee on Immigration, will participate in a serious discussion of high-skilled immigration, its impact on the U.S. economy, and the need for sensible reform.

The event, organized by the national grassroots group Immigration Voice, will highlight the urgent need for Congress to reform America’s broken and discriminatory high-skilled, legal immigration system. Among other issues, participants will discuss the need for Congress to pass H.R.3012, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which will eliminate country caps that keep high-skilled immigrants from some countries, notably India and China, waiting years or even decades longer for green cards than immigrants from other countries.

“This summit will bring people together to discuss ways to fix a broken system,” explained Aman Kapoor, Co-founder and President of Immigration Voice. “Almost a million immigrants already living legally in the U.S. are stuck in a green card backlog that can last decades. Current law traps high-skilled immigrants in a system where they can’t start businesses in the U.S. and can’t work to their full potential. This causes tremendous hardship for immigrant families and harms America’s competitiveness. Everyone loses.”

The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, H.R.3012, which passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 389 to 15, would phase out existing caps on the number of employment-based visas that may be awarded to legal immigrants from a single country. Current law limits any one country to 7% of employment-based permanent resident visas, causing enormous backlogs for legal immigrants from certain large countries that provide America with large numbers of high-skilled immigrants.

Find out more about Immigration Voice, the green card backlog, and the September 8 events at http://www.immigrationvoice.org.

September 8, 2012, Event Details

Summit on High-Skilled Immigration
2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
San Jose Center for the Performing Arts
255 Almaden Boulevard
San Jose, CA 95113

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Immigration Voice is a national grass-roots organization of legal, high-skilled immigrants living in the United States. The group has 90,000 members across the country and represents the interests of the nearly one million skilled immigrants and their family members caught in the existing green card backlogs.