I am writing to urge you to vote NO for bill S386/HR1044 “Fairness for high skilled immigrant act of 2019”. Bill S386/HR1044 will benefit IT consultancies mostly based in India tremendously, while immensely hurt the interest of American businesses and workers, and non Indian skilled workers who intend to immigrate to America.
If Bill S386/HR1044 passed, it will give tremendous gains to the tech consultancies mostly from India while hurting American tech companies. Historically, consultancies have abused the H1B and EB2/3 program to bring cheap labor to the US. Some of them committed visa fraud. Consultancies bring down the IT cost while US tech giants that are willing to pay great amount of money qualified foreign employees have great trouble in bringing in those employees. Removing the per country quota suddenly without implementing comprehensive immigration reform that prevents abuse will increase the green card backlog to qualified skilled workers not from India to 10 years, dissuade them from joining American businesses. Thereby hurting American companies ability to attract and retain the best talent from around the world. According to Mary Meeker, the General Partner of esteemed venture capital firm KPCB, 60% of highest valued tech companies is founded by immigrants or their children from over the world. To create a great contribution to American economy, those talented individuals already need to get through the extremely cumbersome immigration process. If Bill S386/HR1044 passed, many of the talented workers intended to work in the US would quit since a path to permanent residency would be blocked for over 10 years.
On the other side, the companies that treat IT as a cost center and more easily displace American workers and hire consultants from India if the bill pass since consultancies can bring low-cost labor easier by continuing their fraudulent practices. Furthermore, there are other immigrant workers not in IT industry, such as RNs, MDs, and pharmaceutical researchers. The bill will increase the shortage of these type of workers. The bill will only benefit the tech consultancies while harming American tech companies and other industries.
Bill S386/HR1044, while intended to be a bandit fixing the broken immigration process, creates more harm than good. Without a comprehensive immigration reform that is merit base and an increase of the total number of green card issued for the EB category, completely remove per country quota suddenly will ruin diversity, harm American businesses and only benefit IT consultancies. I urge you to vote no to S386/HR1044 or at least propose significant amendment to. For instance, increase the per country quota but not completely eliminated it, so that it will be fair to Indian workers already in the backlog while not completely eliminate the possibility of non-Indian nationals from getting EB based green card in the ten years after the first 3 year transition period. Besides, merit based rules to prevent abuse in the H1B program and EB green card and the total quota of both. Only with a comprehensive overhaul of the current system will fix the current issues while passing S386/HR1044 in its current state will create more disaster than good.