Immigrating legally to the United States is not easy. “Over the past several months, skilled foreign nationals have seen no improvement in their prospects for obtaining green cards and, in fact, wait times are likely to increase in employment-based immigration categories,” according to a new report released by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), an Arlington, Va.-based policy research group.
An October 2011 analysis found the wait times for skilled immigrants, particularly those from India and China, could last 5 to 8 years, or potentially even decades in some cases. The State Department has reported in the latest Visa Bulletin that wait times could be imposed on individuals from countries other than India and China in the employment-based second preference (EB-2), for persons of “exceptional ability” and “advanced degree” holders, with the employment-based first preference (EB-1) category (outstanding researchers and professors, aliens of extraordinary ability) also possibly becoming backlogged as well.
Unlike the long-term problems in entitlement programs such as Social Security, the solutions to reducing the long wait times for employment-based green cards are easy to implement and have received bipartisan support. These solutions center around two areas: eliminating the per country limit and providing more green cards.
Providing additional green cards or exempting from the annual limit foreign nationals with advanced degrees from U.S. universities in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) field, while also eliminating the per country limit, could have a significant impact on employment-based green card backlogs.
The October 2011 NFAP analysis
estimated, “An exemption of at least 50,000 for advanced degree STEM
graduates would eliminate the backlog in the employment-based second
preference (EB-2) and make the category current within three years. It
would also eliminate the employment-based third preference (EB-3)
backlog and potentially make the category current within 10 years.” Even
25,000 additional green cards for holders of U.S. advanced STEM degrees
would likely “eliminate the backlog and make the EB-2 category current
in 4 years.”
An argument made against providing more green cards to highly skilled
foreign nationals is that doing so would harm the job prospects of
Americans. However, skilled scientists, researchers and professionals
help create more jobs and innovations. Moreover, such individuals are
typically hired as part of the normal recruitment process,
complementing, not replacing, Americans. A recent economic analysis
supports the view that immigrants help expand economic opportunities for
others.
Contributor
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2012/06/15/green-card-problems-growing-worse-for-skilled-immigrants/#297cb0c95f7b
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