Since 2011, ethnic lobbying groups and select corporate interests have repeatedly introduced legislation to circumvent employment based green card country caps, a fixture of U.S. immigration law and policy since 1965. Four years ago, H.R. 392, the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act was introduced and two years ago it was H.R. 1044. These legislative attempts even with their trickery, sleight-of-hand and skullduggery have failed.
Fast forward to today, where we may be on the verge of yet another attempt to overturn green card country caps with H.R. 3648 – the Equal Access to Green cards for Legal Employment Act of 2022, or EAGLE Act.
I hope you see the pattern here. It’s always during a “lame duck” session, when the House and Senate reconvene after the November election but before the new Congress begins in January that bills like this are introduced.
Retiring members and those who lost re-election often use this period to pass bills deemed unpopular by their voters. Since they’re not returning to Congress, they face no inherent risk, so why not seize upon the chance to pass legislation that may bring them good fortune down the line?
The EAGLE Act is essentially the Fairness for High Skilled immigrants Act from years prior. Similarly, it seeks to remove the 7% country-cap quota for employment-based green cards that certain ethnic lobbying groups consider “discriminatory” toward Indian nationals desperate to get a Green Card.
The difference is the EAGLE Act provides any foreign worker who has been sponsored for a Green Card and who has waited a minimum of two years the privilege of a renewable employment authorization document (EAD). Some call the EAD “Green Card Lite” as it essentially functions like a Green Card without giving the beneficiary the ability to apply for naturalization, later.
In her article The Eagle Act: Will Congress Vote Against the American Worker and for Cheap Foreign Labor for Big Tech and Corporations, Jessica Vaughn, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies calls out the Act’s “true” beneficiary. “The EAGLE Act was drafted to benefit and reward the tech companies that have relied on lower-paid (and usually lower-skilled) visa workers to replace U.S. workers over the last 10-15 years.”
At the very core of this entire issue is the H-1B visa, created with the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1990. It’s “dual-intent” nature turned what should be a temporary visa into a pathway to citizenship.
Since then, it’s been like witnessing a train wreck in slow motion destined to meet its finale a few short years after the removal of country caps.
And why? It’s because the removal of country cap quotas will ensure, for the next two decades, that Indian nationals receive all employment-based Green Cards at the expense of any other nationality.
In the end, it creates an entirely new Green Card backlog for those defined as “Rest of the World” and exacerbates the very problem it was intended to solve.
But this is all by design. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the bill’s lead sponsor, is hoping that train wreck occurs so that it forces Republicans, who don’t want to increase the number of Green Cards, to now support increasing them once every ethnic lobbying group begins screaming “their” nationals can’t get them.
However, there’s reason to be optimistic. Politicians are waking up to the coming train wreck and the impact it would have on our legal immigration system. Immigration Task Force Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) announced on Twitter she will not support the EAGLE Act because it disadvantages other nationalities at the expense of one country’s nationals. I know there are other members of Congress who feel likewise.
Let’s be clear about two things. First, the passage of the EAGLE Act will further harm white collar/professional workers in the U.S. whether they’re recent college graduates or have been in the workforce for decades. Second, Indian nationals, who make up 70% of H-1B visa recipients and are the main beneficiaries of the Act already take a disproportionate number of employment-based Green Cards compared to the rest of the world.
For instance, by taking allocations from countries that did not reach their 7% maximum quota and by pulling off unused Green Cards from the family-based category, Indian nationals received not 7% but rather 35% of Green Cards in that category in 2021.
Chatter from ethnic Indian lobbying groups like Immigration Voice indicates things aren’t going well and that House Democratic leadership may be backing away from supporting the EAGLE Act. As in years prior, the group’s response is to “pound” the phone lines of congress members on both sides of the aisle. My representative has already received numerous calls!
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