IndiaPost.com - Indian groups reject new immigration bill

India Post News Service

NEW YORK: Indian American legal experts and immigrant rights activists across the board have strongly opposed and rejected the comprehensive Immigration Reform Act 2007.

The compromise arrived at between the White House and the US Senate over the proposed Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act has been termed as a "sell out" by the Senate in the "grand bargain".

Immigration Voice

Expressing serious reservations over the proposed bill, Immigration Voice, an organization representing professionals, said the proposed Immigration Reform was unfair to legal highly-skilled professionals.

"The immigration law currently is as complicated as the Tax Code. While the intentions of the Senators might have been good to streamline the immigration process, the current compromise on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform shows the world that high skilled immigrants are not welcome in this great country," said Aman Kapoor, Founder of Immigration Voice. Announcing a massive phone campaign to US Senators to put "legals first", Kapoor denounced the "grand compromise" plan of the US Senate favoring ‘illegals’ over highly skilled legal immigrants waiting patiently in line. "The high skilled legal immigration system is broken," said Kapoor, "This compromise further alienates us in spite of us being here legally.

These are the worst set of immigration policies for high skilled immigrants in the civilized world." According to Immigration Voice, the Senators that have crafted the new merit based system have announced that this model follows the legal immigration pathway developed in Canada and Australia, but the compromises that have been made have deluded the entire system into a cesspool of half baked immigration ideas. This bill takes away annual Greencards from an already low number of Greencards available to legal, skilled employment based immigrants and awards them to unskilled future guest workers and to the new untested merits based points system, as explained by Immigration Voice.

As an example, an agriculture worker can earn 25 points for working 100 days a year for 5 years, while a skilled individual will get 10 points for working the same number of years. "Economic contribution by the undocumented is recognized by awarding points for property ownership but not for people working legally!" adds Kapoor. While media has been touting how the new points based system eliminates the traditional family values based approach of American immigration, an analysis of the bill shows that employment-based petitions were reduced from 140,000 per year to 90,000 per year to "clear the backlog".

Family-based categories were limited to 250,000 but now have been increased to 567,000 per year. In addition, close to 100,000 of these applicants languishing in backlog will be forced to restart the process in the new system. "We have been waiting patiently for the Congress to come together and fashion a bill that comprehensively overhauls the immigration system for the illegals, what the Senate has done is granted amnesty on the backs of highly skilled US educated legal immigrants," said Kapoor. Highly skilled doctors, scientists, engineers, and computer professionals have been stuck in backlogs since the last 3-4 years.

They had hoped to get relief from the "Immigration Reform", but have been let down badly, according to Immigration Voice. "They are being forced to renew their H-1Bs yearly now, while the old system allowed 3-yr incremental renewals while their Green Card petition was pending. Seems like a fitting reward for following the Laws, isn’t it?" Kapoor asks.

Immigrant Communities in Action (ICA)

ICA, a multi-ethnic coalition of grassroots immigrant rights groups in New York, has joined other national, regional, and local groups around the country to say ‘NO’ to the "Grand Bargain" between US Senators and the White House on the proposed Immigration Reform Act. ICA says immigrant communities face one of the most repressive immigration plans in decades — with minimal opportunities for immigrant to legalize our status, expanded enforcement at the border and interior, a guestworker program with tougher worksite enforcement and minimal worker protections, as well as devastating cutbacks in family immigration to be replaced with merit-based requirements. "We do not see the so-called "Grand Bargain" as a legalization bill, but rather a "report to deport" system for millions of immigrants that cannot jump over the extremely high hurdles—including a restrictive point system which most community members will not qualify for and which penalizes working class immigrants," the ICA says.

The misleading proposal also requires immigrants leaving the US to "touch-back" with no guaranteed right to return as well as having to prove continuous work history. Many of our community members will not qualify due to work and education histories, old age, medical issues including HIV status, and a scarcity of jobs with employer sponsorship, or an inability to fit legal definitions of "family" because of their gender identity or sexuality. "The impacts of this proposal would be devastating on the immigrant communities in New York, with thousands expecting to have the opportunity for permanent status only to enlist in a program resulting in their own deportation," Namita Chad, a member of the Audre Lorde Project stated. Possibly the most contentious part of the plan is the rollback on historic family reunification options for millions of families in the United States.

The ‘Grand Compromise’ eliminates most options for family sponsorships and replaces them with a feeble visitor visa program. Residents will lose the ability to sponsor parents and children who are 18 years or older. "How can other American families stand by while children lose their grandparents and parents are cut off from their own children? While we build the economy for families in this country, we could be completely cut off from our own," states Jennifer Arieta from Centro Hispano "Cuzcatlan".

Any of the feeble "paths" to citizenship will not be available until "interior enforcement," "employer verification," and "border security" milestones are in place, which could take years. Additionally, these "security" measures will encourage local and state police to act as federal immigration agents and place thousands of border patrol & ICE agents in communities and worksites, which would make our communities more vulnerable to abuse, racial profiling and harassment and lead to widespread detention and deportation, the ICA says.

Religious Workers

Elsewhere, managing editor of Hinduism Today, Sri Arumugaswami is circulating a note saying the new policies are likely to affect priests, temple builders and other religious workers. The immigration reforms shaping up in Congress will affect thousands of people who come here to work in religious institutions. Arumugaswami points out that "the changes in US immigration law and increased paper work required for the federal office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) will impact Hindu temples working to bring priests from India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere to the United States." He told SAJAforum he thinks that Hindus account for "hundreds" of the 11,000 odd religious visas issued each year.

"Hindus bring priests and temple builders," he said. "It is the temple builders who appear to be excluded in the new rules."

SAALT

Meanwhile, on May 22, Deepa Iyer, Executive Director of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT) testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, which is conducting a series of hearings to explore the impact of the comprehensive immigration reform. The May 22nd hearing, Iyer says, focused on perspectives of faith-based and immigrant communities on immigration reform Focusing on family and employment-based immigration; legalization of undocumented immigrants; the need for worker protections; and the preservation of due process rights in her testimony, Iyer expressed concerns over pending Senate legislation that could create a disadvantageous merit-based point system for green card applications, and eliminate certain family categories. "SAALT and our local community partners believe that immigration reform must be fair and humane," said Iyer. "The Subcommittee hearing provided a tremendous opportunity to present some of the concerns of the South Asian community, which is 75 percent foreign born. We have serious concerns regarding the proposed Senate bill, and are monitoring legislative activity in the House."