House passes bill to increase H-1B visas: Senate chances dim

The line for visas at the US Embassy in Manila.

Almost lost amidst the news swirling around the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, the citizenship question on the Census, and the pending ICE raids, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (H.R.1044) on Wednesday (July 10) which would change the way H-1B visas are apportioned to each country.

The legislation addresses the decades-long wait times for applicants from places like India, China, or the Philippines by eliminating caps for employment-based visas and raising the family visa cap from 7 percent to 15 percent. 

However, the Senate version will likely go down in flames.

“In order for American industries to remain competitive and create more jobs, they must be able to recruit and retain the best talent in the world,” said the bill's sponsor, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who represents part of Silicon Valley.

Many of the impacted applicants already live and work in America and are doctors, engineers, and scientists who studied in American universities. They have faced decades-long wait times for permanent residence and as a result, have decided to relocate to other countries, subsequently hurting the future of the U.S. economy. 

This is especially good news for Silicon Valley, where around seven in 10 workers are foreign-born. With the limit abolished, Indians, the largest cohort of the H-1B visa recipients with green card wait times ranging between a long 12 and an aggravating 150 years, stand to reap the biggest benefits.

New American Economy (NAE) issued the following statement in support of the legislation:

“This legislation is an important step in creating an immigration system that allows the most talented workers to work in the United States,” said John Feinblatt, President of New American Economy. “We applaud the House for taking action and urge the Senate to follow suit and remove undue barriers that restrict the U.S. economy from reaching its full potential.”

New research from New American Economy finds that:

• Indian, Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese immigrants are disproportionately affected by country caps and the backlog in permanent residency applications. Of the nearly 400,000 green card applications that were in the backlog as of April 2018, over 95 percent hailed from India, China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. 

• Immigrants from countries most directly affected by the current per-country cap are well-educated. Nearly 80 percent of Indian immigrants have bachelor’s degrees and more than 27 percent of Chinese immigrants have advanced degrees.

• The immigrants who may be positively impacted by this legislation will contribute substantially to the American economy. Indian immigrant households earned nearly $162.6 billion and paid more than $50.0 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2017, and Chinese immigrant households earned nearly $116.9 billion in 2017 and paid more than $34.9 billion in taxes. Filipino and Vietnamese immigrants also made significant contributions to the U.S. economy, paying more than $20.5 billion $11.9 billion in taxes respectively and holding more than $53.5 billion and $33.2 billion in spending power respectively

SOURCE: USCIS

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.  ... 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.

Critics of the bill fear that it will allow one country, India in particular, to dominate the visa for decades to come, something that Lofgren admits will occur. She said it would take a decade under her legislation before visa applications would even out.

The Philippines, India and Vietnam would also benefit if the bill passes that doubles the percentage of visas allowed for family reunification, from 7% to 15%. Currently, there are about 336,000 on the wait list, which amounts about a 23 year wait for a visa under this category.

The GOP-dominated Senate will vote on its version of the Bill, S. 386, where it faces only a 4% chance of passage according to govtrack.com. 

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Visas approved for Vietnamese brothers to give bone marrow to sibling

Two Vietnamese brothers will be allowed to travel to the US to donate blood marrow to a third brother in San Jose, Calif., says Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who worked to facilitate the visa approvals.

Lofgren and other California politicians, including Sen. Kamala Harris, intervened after it was learned that visas had been denied to the two brothers. They lobbied the State Department on behalf of the San Jose brother's family, and the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam arranged for another visa interview for the brothers.

Tu Le, a San Jose resident, has been suffering from an aggressive form of cancer that requires the transplant. His brothers were determined to be 100 percent genetic matches, but were originally denied B-2 tourism visas to enter the country.

"I couldn't be happier for Tu Le and his family," Lofgren said in a statement released Tuesday (June 18). "Imagine knowing that a bone marrow transfer may be the only way to save your life; only to see your brothers, who are the bone marrow donors, denied the chance to come save you." 

A petition in his support also gathered more than 18,000 signatures after the San Francisco Chronicle first reported about Le's condition in early June.

"I am pleased the Department of State has recognized the moral imperative to act, and that Tu Le will receive the urgent and life-saving care he needs," Harris said in a statement. "My thoughts will be with Tu Le, his daughter Diem Trinh Colisao, and the rest of their family throughout the road ahead." 

Donors of Asian descent have historically been low making finding a match difficult. Because the markers used in matching are inherited, patients are more likely to match someone from their own race or ethnicity. Adding more bone marrow donors and cord blood units from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to the Be The Match Registry increases the likelihood that patients will find the match they need.

Your heritage can make all the difference.If you are of Asian descent, you are especially encouraged to register as a bone marrow or donate umbilical cord blood upon delivery.

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Rape survivor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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Amanda Nguyen testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

A RAPE SURVIVOR who authored the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights and founded a national civil rights organization for fellow survivors has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In a rare bipartisan action, Amanda Nguyen was nominated for the prestigious honor by Rep Mimi Walters, R-CA. and Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, according to a press release from Rise, the advocacy group founded by the 27-year old Nguyen.

The two California lawmakers nominated Nguyen for her “unprecedented efforts in bringing equal protection under the law and basic human rights to all survivors of sexual assault, regardless of geography.”

Nguyen felt “powerless, invisible and betrayed” when, after a four-hour forensic sexual assault examination for evidence extraction following her rape in 2013 while attending college in Massachusetts, law enforcement officials proceeded to attempt to destroy her rape kit before the statute of limitations had expired. In response, she wrote the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, which was added to the federal criminal code by President Obama and approved by unanimous vote in Congress in 2016.

The Survivors’ Bill of Rights specifically and explicitly states that survivors have the right for their rape kit to be preserved for the length of the case’s statute of limitations, the right to be notified if an evidence kit is set for destruction and the right to be notified of the results of their rape kit.

“Up until [the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Bill of Rights] was passed, every six months, I had to try to save my rape kit from destruction,” Nguyen told WomensHealthMag.com in an earlier interview.

Rape kits have been used to identify DNA from suspects and have been credited with leading to prosecutions. Despite their importance, many law enforcement agencies are years behind collecting data from these rape kits. Some had even destroyed them as soon as six months after the crime. The law impacts nearly 25 million estimated rape survivors in the United States

Because most sexual assault cases are handled by state law enforcement, the federal bill of rights is more of a guideline and an attempt to raise awareness on the issues affecting survivors.

“The problem is that the Act applies only in federal sexual assault cases, and not in state cases where the vast majority of sexual assaults occur—that is, unless the individual state has passed the Act,” Adrienne Lawrence, a California attorney and victim advocate, told Ms.

“Just 14 states have passed the Act so far, which means a number of sexual assault victims across the nation do not and will not have guaranteed rights. Failing to ensure survivors have adequate rights undermines the notion that our justice system is as committed to ending the crime of sexual assault as it is to ending other forms of crime. The Act is necessary because, in a number of states, victims are not informed about what will happen with their rape kits and the kits get destroyed, which basically destroys evidence of a crime and limits the victim’s ability to get justice.”

In a hearing last week before the Senate Judicial Committee to discuss the law's implementation, Nguyen noted her Nobel Peace Prize nomination:

"Yesterday, I had the incredible honor of being formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. When most people think about peace, the work that my team is engaged in may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the truth is for the estimated 35 percent of women on Earth who are survivors of sexual violence, access to justice is a necessary prerequisite to true peace. Their lives are the invisible war zones that corrode human potential and hold back the promise of a just world. Their powerlessness is our shame.

"This is a peace that we all - Senator, citizen, advocate from any corner of the globe - can help deliver. We can hold a light up to this darkest corner of human experience, and allow survivors at last to be seen, to be heard, to be believed, to be empowered.”

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