Eric Thomas or Frances Cox 202/822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 30, 2008

Compete America Joins Family and Community-based Groups to Call for Passage of Green Card Recapture Legislation

Bill Would Make Previously Authorized Employment-based Visas Available

Washington D.C. – Compete America today joined nearly 70 employer, family and community-based organizations to call for passage this year of H.R. 5882, which would “recapture” green cards that Congress authorized in the past but that went unused before the end of the fiscal year because of government processing delays. The bipartisan measure, sponsored by Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), would help to begin to reduce the massive backlog that exists for these visas in part because of these bureaucratic delays.
In a letter sent to all members of Congress, the groups stated: 

“The delays in processing employment-based visas are creating enormous recruitment and retention problems for many of our nation’s most innovative companies and uncertainty for critically needed employees.  For families, the delays in processing are unnecessarily helping to contribute to a 7 to 10 year wait for legal permanent residents to be reunited with their spouses and minor children.  These delays not only undermine families but delay the process of integration while legal permanent residents work to support two separate households.

“The Lofgren/Sensenbrenner legislation would address this problem by allowing for previously authorized and unused green cards to be recaptured and applied to the current family- and employment-based backlogs.  It would address these backlogs without creating one new green card.  The Department of State has testified that this is the ‘perfect solution’ to the annual loss of green cards through processing delays.”

The groups went on to point out that the legislation is only a short-term fix.  “This proposal would provide modest but important relief for our economy, and immediate and substantial relief for tens of thousands of families.  It is important to emphasize again that the Lofgren/Sensenbrenner legislation provides only short-term relief, and does not reduce the urgency of comprehensive immigration reform, or our collective commitment to working with the 111th Congress to enact comprehensive reform.  Indeed, enactment of HR 5882 will represent a key first step toward the kind of broad-based bipartisan cooperation we will need if comprehensive reform is to be successful.”

U.S. employers rely on employment-based (EB) green cards to keep much-needed and sought-after highly educated professionals living, working and innovating in America.  In addition to H.R. 5882, Compete America has endorsed passage of H.R. 6039/S. 3084 – which would exempt highly educated, foreign-born students earning an advanced degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics from a U.S. university from the annual EB green card limit – and H.R. 5921 – which would eliminate per country limits on EB green card distribution.

For a copy of the letter, click here.

For more information on how highly educated immigration benefits America, please visit www.competeamerica.org. 

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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