Thread: Easy immigration, not red tape

[My note: this article is about HR 3012, a bill to make it much easier for Indian and Chinese temporary guest workers to get green cards and stay here in jobs they were given in preference to American workers, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3012:# If this doesn't sound good to you, better contact your representatives fast, as this bill is the outcome of 6 years of stealth lobbying and is being fast-tracked right now. There is also a poll at this article]

Is it time for the U.S. to make it easier for highly skilled foreign nationals -- high-level engineers, medical specialists, research scientists, specialized academics -- to enter the United States for employment? Rep. Jason Chaffetz thinks so. He is a co-sponsor of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act (HR 3012), which would eliminate the current numerical limitation by country (different countries have different limits) and adjust the limits on family visas without increasing the total number of available visas.

The numerical caps by country mean that an American business that needs a particular worker may not be able to make the hire.

"The current percentage cap has created a backlog of qualified workers," Chaffetz said. "American companies view all highly skilled immigrants as the same regardless of where they are from, and our immigration policy should do the same."

This is a good idea, and long overdue. The per-nation caps on immigration are relics of a bygone era when most people worked on farms or in assembly-line factories. High-level skills were of less importance because it was mainly the Americans who had them.

That is no longer the case. The assumption of the technical superiority of the American worker is long gone. To continue to thrive, American businesses need to tap an outside pool. Government needs to get out of their way.

Today Americans are more appreciative of different cultures, and better understand how immigrants' abilities and personal characteristics contribute to the nation's well-being. Our laws should mesh with this more enlightened perspective.

This is especially true of people who have studied here and would like to pursue their dreams as entrepreneurs. They have benefitted from our universities and from working at American companies. They want to take what they have learned here not only to enhance existing companies but to make new enterprises blossom, which would in turn drive the economy.

We could use the help.

But the current laws make highly qualified immigrants and the American companies that want to hire them jump through excessive hoops. This is ...well ... crazy.

Some hotheads might say: Send 'em back where they came from. But think about it. These are able people. If they return to their home countries, they'll be productive workers or business owners there, and their enterprises will challenge U.S.-based businesses. The smart move is to embrace them and bolster growth in the U.S.A.

Chaffetz's bill is welcome. Too bad it doesn't go far enough. Bigger steps are needed, but the political barriers are daunting.

First of all, there should be fewer obstacles to an American company's hiring an outsider of its choice for any skilled work, not just highly skilled work. Obviously computer programmers or research scientists have rare talents. But there are plenty of other fields that may not have the same glamour but which require definite skills far above menial labor. Such workers make big contributions to society, and the U.S. needs them, too.

Second, current law imposes way too much red tape on the hiring process. The essence of the free market is that people are the best judges of what is best for them, and their cumulative decisions are the best for country as a whole. The huge snarl of current government rules only impedes the American economy, hurting us all.

Managers and owners are only going to hire people who produce. They don't need bureaucrats telling them who those employees should be. Skilled foreigners already in the country who want to start a business here should be given a red carpet, not red tape.

When the best people are hired, from wherever they may come, business succeeds. And when business succeeds, America succeeds. There are more jobs and a healthier economy. The benefits flow to all workers, whether they immigrated last year or their ancestors came over on the Mayflower.

The ultimate answer to the immigration of skilled workers is to trust American business and cut federal interference to a minimum. A prevailing wage standard is important to ensure that employers don't abuse the system and import cheap labor at the expense of American labor. But that's about the only thing government needs to monitor.

It should get out of the way. It should expedite the visas of whomever a business wants to hire. It should automatically approve work visas upon application by a bona fide company.

Even those advances would fall short of the reforms needed to solve the wider immigration quandary. Given the emotions raised by the issue, we expect the final solution will be some time off. In the meantime, HR 3012 would be a small step in the right direction.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion ... z1b7V8R0vv

Needless to say, the proposed beneficiaries are lobbying our elected representatives hard for this. Ironic that these non-citizens have more and better access to our representatives than we do, or this bill would never be in the works in the first place.

HR 3012 action items for the week of oct 17

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Dear Members,

Firstly, thank you for making calls last week to members of Congress especially the House Judiciary committee. We are getting good feedback numbers on the call volume. As of Thursday last week, the bill introduction has been delayed by 10-14 days. The House comes back in session on the 24th. It could not get introduced in the committee last week due to lack time as the debate on preceding bills ran into over-time in the Judiciary committee. But there is no doubt that the bill H.R. 3012 is going to be introduced in next 10-14 days.
We need to continue phone calls and emails. The message is slightly different for this week. Let us not be complacent now and let us continue with our already impactful phone campaign.


Actions to be performed this week:


Quote:
Originally Posted by ;
A. Continue with current Action Item numbers 1 through 5 listed on IV's website on the earlier thread here (H.R. 3012 - Urgent Action Items: Letters + Phone calls and Fundraising).

For new message/talking points on action item # 4 (Phone calls to Congress), refer to rebuttal talking points at the end of this email and use them if needed. These 5 points are rebuttal to claims made by those opposing H.R. 3102. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Click here for directions and perform action items 1, 4 and 5. Read rebuttal points below before performing action item 4 (phone calls to congress).

B. Additional Action Items effective immediately

Quote:
Originally Posted by ;
ACTION ITEM #6
Meeting Local District Offices of House of Representatives - After having called the Representatives last week, it is now time to step up the efforts.
IV is now coordinating meetings for our members with local district offices. This is an extremely critical effort.
- Find your local Representative here
- Please volunteer to participate in a meeting with your local district office to stress for support for HR3012. IV will provide you with all the materials and guidance. All you have to do is come forward to help with this critical effort.
Email district@immigrationvoice.org with your name, email, phone # and location to get the process started. We will send you directions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ;
ACTION ITEM #7

Vote in Support of the bill in an online poll on OpenCongress to make sure that Congress knows there is an overwhelming support for this bill. Click here and support H.R. 3012.


Quote:
Originally Posted by pappu;
Additional Notes
Use these points if you run into staffer who has additional questions about H.R. 3012. Please be polite.

(1) A fair system : HR 3012 makes sure that through a first-come-first-serve system, an Engineer from India, an Engineer from China and an Engineer from Australia – all wait the same amount of time in one single queue. The current system of immigration is not first-come-first-serve. As evidenced by current wait times published by the State Department, some immigrants are leap-frogging ahead of others even though they have same college degree and same type of job. Imagine a Wal-Mart with 50 different check-out counters for customers from 50 different states. Customers from Idaho and Rhode Island will be zipping through. Customers from New York, Texas and California will have long queues and will wait forever. All customers have same amount of business to offer but some wait more and others wait less. That is what is going on in the current immigration system. H.R. 3012 makes sure that all check-out counters accept customers from all states and every check-out counter processes people on first-come-first-serve basis. That’s how a competitive business would treat their customers. And that’s how a competitive nation should treat its skilled immigrants. First come first serve.

(2) Widespread support from everyone : HR 3012 has support of half a million skilled employees like myself, US Chamber of Commerce, Compete America, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, various trade groups like BSA, SIA, ITIC.

(3) Not a sudden change or jolt to the system; slowly phased in: HR 3012 will slowly phase-in the first-come first serve system over a period of 3 years. It will not jolt the system will a sudden change, even though this change is a minor technical fix. None of the current applicants in the system already will be affected. 3 years from today, the new applicants will face a fair and equitable first-come-first-serve system.

(4) Diversity in American Immigration is safe and secure. HR 3012 addresses only a small subset of total US immigration – which is skilled based employment immigration. It accounts for about 15% of total immigration in this country. H.R. 3012 will eliminate per-country quota system from this category and make it a first-come first-serve system. The other 85% of American immigration system will continue to have provisions for per-country diversity.

(5) H.R. 3012 does not increase the net immigration into the country. It keeps the total number of immigration and total number of green-cards the same as it is today. It is a technical fix within the current numbers and current levels.

Please use this thread for additional discussions on the action items. Use ONLY the feedback form (action item#5) to provide any specific feedback from your phone calls.
Please take action without delays. Just 5 more weeks to go.

Thanks,
Team IV

http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/forum ... ost2942294

Ironic that these non-citizens have more and better access to our representatives than we do, or this bill would never be in the works in the first place.

we have spineless reps who care nothing for their constituents

This article should be in our NEWS section not OTHER TOPICS since it is clearly related to immigration matters.

Also, we should not be importing more workers at a time when American workers need these jobs.

If America is not producing the high skilled workers we need, then we need to address that instead of importing workers from abroad.

And to be honest, from what I am seeing we do not have a shortage of high skilled workers here in the US. Our high skilled workers are being intentionally replaced by imported workers from China which appears to have a great deal of control over American companies and governments at this time.

Perhaps some of you should send this news to Congressmen supporting this bill?

New Record: Nation's immigrant population, legal & illegal, hits record
http://www.alipac.us/article6656.html

W

moving to News

Added to Homepage with amended title--

http://www.alipac.us/article-6683--0-0.html

Sorry about the placement. I was walking on eggs because it's an H-1B issue but it has turned into an immigration issue with the mention of green cards.

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

This article should be in our NEWS section not OTHER TOPICS since it is clearly related to immigration matters.

Also, we should not be importing more workers at a time when American workers need these jobs.

W

This bill is about making the rules more fair and balanced for people from certain countries (e.g India or China) who are already living and working in the US for a number of years. Under current rules, a person from Iran or Pakistan who applies for an employment based green card gets his or her employment based green card in a matter of months while a person from India or China could wait for more than 6 yrs to get one. This is not an equitable system. HR 3012 attempts to redress this issue so that people have to wait the same amount of time irrespective of country of origin. This is a bill that Americans should support because nobody can quickly get a green card in this system which especially from a national security perspective can be problematic.

Originally Posted by Crikey

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

This article should be in our NEWS section not OTHER TOPICS since it is clearly related to immigration matters.

Also, we should not be importing more workers at a time when American workers need these jobs.

W

This bill is about making the rules more fair and balanced for people from certain countries (e.g India or China) who are already living and working in the US for a number of years. Under current rules, a person from Iran or Pakistan who applies for an employment based green card gets his or her employment based green card in a matter of months while a person from India or China could wait for more than 6 yrs to get one. This is not an equitable system. HR 3012 attempts to redress this issue so that people have to wait the same amount of time irrespective of country of origin. This is a bill that Americans should support because nobody can quickly get a green card in this system which especially from a national security perspective can be problematic.

We do not need ANY economic immigrants in this country when millions of Americans are unemployed. And we do not need to have ANY trade with China at all. We need to be self-sufficient! And any immigration into the USA should have a positive effect on existing US citizens rather than to multi-national corporations that have no loyalty to America. American workers should never be forced to compete with 3rd world workers in China, India or anywhere else.

Increasing legal immigration levels now proves that some politicians are really out to completely destroy America. Some of these Republicans are as bad as the Democrats and will hand China the keys to the country.

China does not need to build up a big military to take on America, they just need to keep buying off politicians like these.