Why Does the Government Care Where Immigrant Workers Were Born?

If you want to understand how flawed America ’s immigration system is, consider this: the government treats immigrants differently based on their place ofbirth. The system considers immigrants ’ education, use of welfare, criminal history, employment, family connections, and other personal details, but where you were born can make the difference between receiving legal residency immediately and waiting decades. This discrimination makes as little sense as discriminating based on race, g ender, or any other attribute over which the individual has no control, and it should be abolished.Fortunately, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,has reintroduced the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act (H.R. 392) to abolish this discrimination for all employment-based immigrants.Here is how the discrimination works. Rather than waiting in one big line together in the order that their applications were received, immigrants wait in separate lines based on their nationality —a line for Mexicans, a line for Swiss, a line for Canadians, etc. Each line has the same limit on the number of visas issued in any given year: no more than7 percent of all visas issued that year. These are called the “per-country limits.” For example, there are40,000 visas made available to immigrant workers (and their families) with a bachelor ’s degree. No country can receive more than 2,800 of them.This means that the line for the Estonians and th...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs