To the sheer relief of over a million people in the US, the official status of H.R.1044 on Congress.gov is updated to ‘Passed Senate’, thanks to the persistent efforts of Senator Mike Lee!
The version that passed has two major changes pertinent to us:
- In years 1-9 after implementation, no more than 70% of the Green Cards can go to H1 visa holders & their dependents.
- Year 10 onwards, no more than 50% of the Green Cards can go to H1 visa holders & their dependents.
While not everything that we wanted, it will still clear the existing backlog a lot sooner than the present miserable situation, where according to David Bier from the CATO Institute, “Indian employer-sponsored applicants face an 8-decade wait for green cards, and nearly 200,000 will die before they could even theoretically reach the front of the line.” (Latest draft of the document: IVFile-202012-386latest)
After working on this bill for over a decade (the bill was first introduced in 2008), you can take it from us that the bill is a great and hard-fought first-step towards a fairer more equitable immigration system. Even though the bill has passed the Senate, we still have some way to go, the Senate version is significantly different from the House version, the differences must be reconciled, the reconciled version must pass both chambers of Congress again, and finally, the bill must be sent to the President’s desk.
On behalf of over 1 million people, we express our deepest gratitude to the United States Senator Mike Lee for 10+ years of leadership, hard work, and determination to get S.386 passed. He is the most principled Senator and a hero to the high skilled immigrants in the backlog. We also thank his phenomenal staffers – Elizabeth, Wendy, Allyson (and Blake).
Please click here to watch this historic moment as it unfolded on the Senate floor.
