BILL: Should We Streamline the Visa Process For Skilled Migrant Workers? - EAGLE Act of 2023 - S.3291
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
The Bill
S.3291 - EAGLE Act of 2023
Bill Details
- Sponsored by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Nov. 13, 2023
- Committee: Senate - Judiciary
- House: Not yet voted
- Senate: Not yet voted
- President: Not yet signed
Bill Overview
- The Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act of 2023, or the EAGLE Act, modifies requirements for employment-based visas. It allows employers to focus on hiring immigrants based on their merits rather than their birthplace.
- Eliminates the per-country cap for employment-based immigrant visas, and increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of visas available annually to 15%. Under the current 7% cap, certain countries like India and China, which account for over 40% of the world's population, receive the same number of visas as Denmark, a country that accounts for 0.001% of the world's population.
- Imposes new requirements on an employer seeking an H-1B visa holder (a highly skilled foreign professional), such as prohibiting an employer from advertising that a position is only open to H-1B applicants or that H-1B applicants are preferred to protect American workers.
- Enables certain non-U.S. nationals to obtain lawful permanent resident status if the individual is in the country as a nonimmigrant, has an approved immigrant visa petition, and has waited at least two years for a visa.
What's in the Bill?
Eases the visa backlog
- Unlike other visa categories, 95% of employment-based Green Card applicants already live and work in the U.S. on temporary visas, but must wait years (or decades) for permanent visas because of visa caps.
- This legislation would ease the backlog for the individuals who have to wait the longest.
Provides opportunities for immigrants
- The bill reserves a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability) and EB-3 (skilled and other workers) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas.
- Employment-based visa holders who are impacted by the backlog cannot start new businesses, visit loved ones in other countries at risk of being denied entry into the U.S., or change employers at the risk of being pushed back in the green card queue.
- While immigrant workers are in the U.S., they are dependent on their employers to maintain legal status and cannot change jobs, creating space for bad employers to take advantage of them. The bill could prevent exploitation.
Protects American workers and economy
- Prevents attrition of highly skilled workers to countries where it is easier for them to secure visas and live a full life.
- The CATO Institute estimates that removing national origin discrimination on employment-based Green Cards could result in an average wage increase for the immigrant worker of $11,592.
- For the first time ever, employers who hire foreign workers will have to advertise the jobs to American workers on a searchable Department of Labor website for at least 30 calendar days before hiring immigrant workers.
- Employers with over 50% of non-American-born workers will not be allowed to hire any more foreign workers.
- Forces employers to justify the wages offered to immigrant employees so an employer cannot undercut American workers.
What Supporters Are Saying
"In rural states like North Dakota, highly skilled immigrant doctors and nurses play a critical role in our healthcare workforce, sometimes providing the only specialty care available in the area. Per-country caps are nonsensical, and it's past time our immigration policies reflected a skills-based approach."
- Aman Kapoor from Immigration Voice:
"The bill transitions the allocation of employment based green cards to a first-come, first served application while not unduly burdening foreign nationals from countries that were accustomed to special treatment and having no wait time at all to receive green cards due to discriminatory per country limits. The bill ensures that American workers are made the top-priority for hiring by all U.S. companies such that no foreign worker can undercut an American worker for a U.S. job."
What Opponents Are Saying
"This EAGLE Act is just one more effort from a political class out of touch with the American people, seeking to import cheap foreign labor at the urging of business lobbyists and activist groups...To be clear, the EAGLE Act is fundamentally premised on a false narrative that it will not harm American workers."
- In an open letter, the American Hospital Association said about similar legislation, the EAGLE Act of 2022:
"The solution to addressing the backlog in employment-based visas is not to eliminate the per-country cap, but rather to acknowledge there are not enough immigrant visas overall to meet the demand for foreign-born, highly-skilled workers for all sectors in the United States."
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
-Emma Kansiz
(Photo Credit: Canva)
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To improve the calibre of talent in occupations, the US must enact legislation requiring only talented individuals to get visas beforehand.
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No not now
BILL: Should We Streamline the Visa Process For Skilled Migrant Workers? - EAGLE Act of 2023 - S.3291
No!
Representatives and Senators,
I ask that this Bill Be Stongly Opposed.
I am very, very reluctant to recommend supporting anything other than very short term VISA legislation, three to five years at most. Switching over to lenient VISA Policies seriously hurts fixing American's workforce weaknesses in the fields of STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
America's failure in STEM is an issue which highlights one of America's huge, odiferous Buffaloes—the education systems.
Math education: US scores stink because of how schools teach lessons https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/02/28/math-scores-high-school-lessons-freakonomics-pisa-algebra-geometry/4835742002/
U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries | Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
"An international comparison of upper secondary mathematics education. 24 Country Profiles" https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/Country_profiles_outlier_NuffieldFoundation18_04_11.pdf?
Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries: 2015 https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016100.pdf?ssp=1&setlang=en-US&
International Comparisons in Education | American Institutes for Research https://www.air.org/our-work/education/international-comparisons-education
By all accounts America's public schools are continuing to suffer at every level and in every area. In particular, America's large urban school solutions requires small class sizes, a willingness to reimplement homogeneous groupings (AKA Honor's also called SP, Regular, and Remedial Classes. Note: this is different from the various categories of Special Education.) Heterogeneous (Mixed) grouping has been US Urban Education's biggest failure. When classes are too large and abilities to diverse teachers cannot teach multiple lessons. Also needed is a re-implementation of alternative sites for those with chronic behavioral issues. Of course, we must prioritizing developing (or rediscovering) rigorous STEM Education programs up and down the Pre-K through 12 curricula including serious, meaningful reforms and cash infusions to recruit people willing to specialize in teaching STEM in the primary and secondary grades in public schools. In addition we must recognize that people willing to teach the "hard" subjects must not also have to deal with the kinds of discipline problems introduced since the "reforms" of the 1970's and every failed effort since including under Reagan, GW Bush and Obama.
See
States with the Highest and Lowest Math Scores - Learner
https://www.learner.com/blog/states-with-highest-math-scores
This should make people sick.
We should reform the Visa system for workers of all kinds. We need more skilled workers and we need more migrant workers, and neither of these systems should be random or based on a lottery. We should prioritize skills we need in high-need industries and jobs, and we should make these visas stable and certain for the length of time we can use these workers.
But until the Republicans stop their insistence on building a wasteful wall and using law enforcement or soldiers at the border, I don't see this going anywhere. Republicans don't really care about workers, humanity or need.
I think this bill or any other that reduces the backlog for workers from countries with huge demographics is the need of the hour. I have seen blatant partiality preventing workers from those countries from progressing in their careers. Switching jobs on temporary visa (H-1B) is next to impossible and always carries the risk of being thrown back to their home countries. They can't start their own business to generate employment for American workers due to the nature of the temporary visa.
Removing country cap will ensure all the workers stuck in this backlog will be able to avoid all of these drawbacks. Their kids, who don't know any other country than the US and are ageing out of dependence, will be able to continue their studies without having to apply as a foreigner.
The biggest benefit of removing country caps and giving permanent residencies to workers from these countries will be to return them their self respect, passions and dreams, which were the primary reasons to immigrate to the United States. This is what America is about! Being stuck in the backlog kills their drives to innovate and make life better for everyone around them.
Agreed that this is not the best solution, but there is no best solution, unless the very start of this chain of events, i.e. H-1B is regulated. There are unlimited H-1B visas for any coutnry within the capped 85k visa, but Green Card is capped at 11k. We know the biggest number of H-1B beneficiaries are Indians, so capping the H-1B visa itself at 7% would make the equations at both ends look balanced and then the parliament can decide on the best course going forward, i.e. whether to increase the number of visas allocated in both the immigrant and non-immigrant categories.
Until there is the mentioned H-1B reform, the backlog from India and China will keep growing and several Indians who genuinely work hard towards the growth of American will never get the fair share of it, and removing country caps, even if temporarily, will be the only solution in sight.
Believe it or not there are areas of agreement on Immigration - we recently did a survey where there is support for certain work visa reforms.
https://www.activote.net/what-do-we-really-think-about-immigration/
The U.S. has a shortage of highly skilled workers especially in fields requiring math and/or science background mainly because U.S. STEM education is lacking in K-12, and higher education in these fields can cost $100K-$300K for advanced degrees in the U.S. while other countries provide advanced education at a low cost or free.
As a result U.S. companies sponsor many foreign workers for green cards just to fill their open positions. Having worked in tech & science companies, and a very high portion of the work force was foreign born and trained.
As long as the U.S. doesn't fix the educational system, businesses will continue to recruit abroad.
"U.S. STEM education lags many other countries. Out of 37 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the U.S. ranks seventh in science and 25th in mathematics literacy, falling behind countries such as Japan, South Korea, Estonia and the Netherlands."
https://fortune.com/2023/01/04/made-in-america-manufacturing-jobs-labor-shortage-retraining-stem/amp/
Let's also deal with the problem of citizenship/greencards for Dreamer/DACA recipients
The Eagle Act would facilitate the mass-scale transference of America tech jobs to foreign workers from India & China. Already, we have a huge problem with foreign tech workers engaging in blatant ethnic nepotism & fraud to get various work visas (H-1B, B1, L1), so they can build their ethnic economic colonies in Silicon Valley. If the Eagle Act passes, these foreign tech workers would be given quick permanent residence and then would proceed to import a huge number of their co-ethnics.
I'm old enough to remember when American tech companies hired American workers. Then during the 2000s, huge numbers of Indians & Chinese started to flood in, due to ethnic favoritism among foreign hiring mangers based in the USA. This totally foreignized the tech workforce and made it very hard for Americans, especially young people, to gain empoyment in Silicon Valley. Even worse, many older American tech workers were blantantly pushed out and replaced with younger foreigners.
If the Eagle Act passes, this problem will become far more extreme. If you want a middle-class in the USA and jobs for your kids & grandkids, then you absolutely must speak out against the Eagle Act. Call your local Congressmen and Senators and let them know to oppose this horrendous bill.
The Heritage Foundation has written an excellent policy paper about why the Eagle Act is so harmful to the economic & national security interests of the USA. See here: https://www.heritage.org/press/dhs-veteran-heritage-fellow-blasts-eagle-act-gift-chinese-communist-party-devastating-our
Please oppose the Eagle Act!
This bill would undercut our American workforce and may be utilized to hire workers only from certain countries (I'm thinking lighter, whiter countries). The way to ensure our work shortage needs are met, is to ensure we increase visas for high need areas, like agriculture and medical care.