Immigration Voice, a national non-profit organization with over 100,000 members that advocates for the alleviation of restrictions on employment, travel, and working conditions faced by legal high-skilled immigrants in the United States working as doctors, researchers, scientists, and engineers at many of America’s Fortune 500 companies is proud to announce the bipartisan passage of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 in the House of Representatives.
Earlier today, the bill, which already had a record 311 bipartisan cosponsors, passed by 365 votes under suspension of rules in the House. Suspension of the rules votes typically are used for commonsensical broadly supported bipartisan legislation. This bill was the first bipartisan immigration bill that passed either the House or the Senate this year. The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act creates a fair and equitable, “first come, first serve” system for receiving employment-based green cards, putting an end to the discriminatory quota system that has left over 1 million Indian high-skilled workers in the United States with a decades-long line while individuals from other countries face no wait time at all to receive a green card.
The lead sponsors of this bill in the House are the Chairwoman and the Ranking Member of the House Immigration Subcommittee—Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Ken Buck.
Aman Kapoor, the Co-Founder and President of Immigration Voice stated that: “Immigration Voice is absolutely thrilled that the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act has received this overwhelming bipartisan support and vote of confidence from the members of the House of Representatives. People are finally understanding that no matter what else is wrong with our immigration system, we can all agree that discrimination should never be a basis for deciding who is given access to permanent residency in the United States. The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act is a win-win for the American people. It will grow our economy by allowing highly skilled immigrants to start their own companies and will make sure that these new companies hire American workers who are made more attractive by this bill. We are incredibly grateful to Representatives Lofgren and Buck for their leadership and are confident that this will be the year the bill will pass.”
