FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 12, 2017
CONTACT: Taylor Thornley Keeney • 804-543-7053 • taylor.keeney@navigatorsglobal.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Compete America, a coalition of American employers dedicated to ensuring that the United States has the highly skilled workforce it needs to continue to lead the world in innovation and job creation, issued the following statement regarding the introduction of the “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act” (H.R. 392) by Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT).
“Compete America commends Congressman Chaffetz for reintroducing the ‘Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act’ and drawing attention to the green card backlog. The proposed bill offers a sensible fix to address inequalities in the system that are based solely on country of birth. We agree that employment-based green cards for highly skilled immigrants should be conferred based on when someone begins the process and the skills they bring to our economy, not where they were born. We look forward to supporting this bill during the 115th Congress.”
H.R. 392, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, replaces the current per-country caps on immigration with a first-come first-served visa system without increasing the total number of available visas. The current system of awarding no more than 7% of available employment-based visas to any one country has created backlogs of well over a decade for some highly skilled immigrants, while equally skilled individuals from other countries have far shorter waiting periods.
An identical version of this bill (H.R. 3012) passed the House during the 112th Congress with a bipartisan vote of 389 to 15. Subsequent versions of the bill were introduced in the 113th (HR 633) and 114th (HR 213) Congresses but did not receive a vote. HR 213 had 147 cosponsors.
To learn more about the benefits of highly educated foreign-born professionals to the U.S. economy, visit www.competeamerica.org.
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