Dear Friends,

As many of you might know, a partisan organization is planning some events in the next few months. Many Immigration Voice members have seen material that is falsely suggesting that Immigration Voice is part of such events, and they have reached out to us asking for clarification whether Immigration Voice supports such events.

We strongly urge our members not to affiliate, attend, or otherwise support events or meetings facilitated by groups that either have partisan names or partisan objectives or, seek to advance any legislation other than H.R.392.

There will come a day, after H.R.392 passes the Congress, that we can then ask for other changes to the system, but no other changes are possible now if a simple bill like H.R.392 with 317+ bipartisan cosponsors cannot pass. Any effort to make the backlog issue partisan or affiliate with expanding or reducing immigration will significantly damage our cause and will diminish the chances of our bill by alienating any one party thereby reducing the current overall level of support for our bill.

To be clear, we are not saying for you to only work with Immigration Voice, rather we are simply saying that any work with either a partisan group or a group that is not advocating solely and fully for the passage of H.R.392 is moving us backward rather than forward.

Therefore, we strongly advise all individuals affected by green card backlogs to be smart and denounce these partisan groups, and, putting your own best interest first, not to support such organizations with your time, resources, or effort.

Again, to be very clear, we would like to make the following points:

  1. It literally took multiple years (2010-2011) to carefully negotiate the language of the per-country bill with multiple stakeholders including the business community, Tech Companies, Chamber of Commerce, Family-based Immigration Groups, and both, Democrats and Republicans.
  2. Any changes to the bill that has 317+ co-sponsors outside of a must-pass bill like DACA will re-trigger these lengthy negotiations and could easily take us into the next Congress or most likely much further.
  3. We believe all these shenanigans are being done to sabotage the Per-country bill by shady Indian consulting companies which we have been told have given money to this partisan group.
  4. If any immigration advocacy for high-skilled immigrants is done under the “Democratic” or “Republican” banner – then instantly the HR.392 becomes political and we will be stuck in the same legislative black-hole that all other immigration issues are stuck in. We have worked very hard to keep HR.392 non-political and build the support we need to get to the point where adding HR.392 to a must-pass bill is a realistic possibility.
  5. The term “DALCA” (Deferred Action for Legal Childhood Arrivals) is nonsensical and offensive to a significant number of Democrats and Republicans in Washington. The people in the United States with legal status do not need any kind of “Deferred Action”. We think the term “DALCA” is deliberately designed to offend DACA supporters (which include Democrats and many Republicans). Nothing can pass outside of Comprehensive Immigration Reform without bi-partisan support. Offending DACA supporters and turning them against H.R.392 is exactly the strategy that our opponents are pursuing to make sure our members remain indentured servants for the rest of their lives. This is why we need you to get smart – reject and denounce these dirty tricks which will cause us to have less support for our bill to remove per-country limits.
  6. If you get injured in an accident and your leg is broken, wiping the blood off your skin will not fix the broken leg. Likewise, visa stamping, visa renewals, and now this DALCA is superficial to the underlying problem caused by per-country limits. Just as you cannot fix your broken leg by wiping the blood off, exactly the same way, talking about DALCA type of made-up terms will not fix the underline problem. You have to be smart and mature to focus on the root cause of the problem.
  7. The fact is no other changes are possible to the system now if a simple bill like H.R.392 with 317+ bipartisan cosponsors cannot pass. And that is the only way to get relief for skilled immigrants stuck in backlogs outside of a Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which is not likely to happen for the foreseeable future (maybe next 6-8 years).
  8. If this partisan group wants to help, they can help the community by using their alleged connections with President Trump to save the H4-EAD program. The partisan group can do so, by asking President Trump to order DHS to abandon their attempts to eliminate the H4-EAD program – this is something one would hope they would do, but they haven’t done. And that should underscore the fact that having pictures with someone means nothing if that does not translate into a real outcome.

To reiterate, we strongly urge our members not to affiliate, attend, or otherwise support events or meetings facilitated by groups that either have partisan names or partisan objectives or, seek to advance any legislation other than H.R.392.

Thank you,
Immigration Voice