Immigration Voice, the national grassroots organization of legal, high-skilled immigrants, today welcomed the bipartisan immigration reform package introduced in the Senate by the so-called Gang of Eight. Immigration Voice praised the proposal for addressing the green card backlogs that result in many legal immigrants spending years, or even decades, in this country before becoming permanent residents. An estimated 1 million legal, high-skilled immigrants already in the US are currently caught in green card backlogs.
“We’re gratified that senators from both parties have come together to try to fix an immigration system that everyone agrees is broken,” said Aman Kapoor, President of Immigration Voice. “Their efforts to clear the green card backlogs for legal, high-skilled immigrants and their families are particularly needed and welcome. No legal immigrant living, working, and paying taxes in America should be forced to wait decades for a green card.”
While the group is generally supportive of the bipartisan compromise proposal, they expressed unease that the proposal does little to ease job mobility for high-skilled immigrants. Current law makes it extremely difficult, and in many cases impossible, for such immigrants to change employers prior to receiving permanent residency.
“There is a significant room to improve upon the proposal by providing needed job mobility for high-skilled immigrants,” said Pratik Dakwala, the group’s co-founder and Vice President. “Keeping high-skilled immigrants tethered to a specific job or employer harms the US economy, puts American workers at a disadvantage and prevents skilled immigrants from reaching their full potential. We’ll do all we can to encourage Congress to address this important issue as the process moves forward.”
Find out more about Immigration Voice and the green card backlog at immigrationvoice.org.
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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 almost 80,000 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.
