Immigration Voice Applauds Bipartisan Judiciary Committee Vote to Fix Unintended Backlogs Confronting Legal, High-Skilled Immigrants

Washington, DC, October 30, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The national grassroots group Immigration Voice today praised the House Judiciary Committee upon the passage through the Committee of the bill, H.R. 3012, the “Fairness for High-skilled Immigrants Act.” The Judiciary Committee approved the bill, sponsored by Representatives Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), by a voice vote this morning.

The legislation would phase out existing quotas on the number of employment-based visas that may be awarded to legal immigrants from a single country. Current law limits any one country to 7% of employment-based permanent resident visas, causing enormous backlogs for legal immigrants from certain large countries that provide America with large numbers of skilled immigrants. The bill also adjusts upward the per country caps for family-based visas from 7% to 15%.

“It’s particularly heartening that Representative Chaffetz’s bill received such broad support from both Republicans and Democrats on the Committee,” said Aman Kapoor, President of Immigration Voice. We’re grateful for the leadership shown by Representative Chaffetz and the bill’s cosponsors, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-CA), Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Representative Tim Griffin (R-AR). Virtually everyone agrees that the current system – which can leave skilled, legal immigrants waiting in bureaucratic limbo for decades – makes no sense. We urge Congress to pass this important legislation without delay.”

Find out more about Immigration Voice and the green card backlog at www.immigrationvoice.org.

###

Immigration Voice is a national grass-roots organization of legal, high-skilled immigrants living in the United States. The group has almost 70,000 members across the country and represents the interests of the nearly one million skilled immigrants and their family members caught in the existing green card backlogs.