Thanks for offering to answer this question. Immigration law is so often an inflammatory topic, but I think your perspective as someone who has to work with the law, the US agencies that enforce it, and the people trying to navigate it could be really valuable.
Not Peter but would like to spur discussion on positive changes that could be made.
- Paper-free overhaul of the entire immigration system.
- Green Card recapture [0].
- Country of Birth caps abolished for Green Cards. Impossible to justify this as it doesn't serve the intended purpose since AC21 was passed.
- EAD/AP premium processing - so many livelihoods ruined and immigration journeys derailed because people can't get work authorization or cannot travel.
- TD holders granted working rights incident of status same as L2S.
Now for the not-so-popular suggestions...
- Diversity Lottery - there's bipartisan support to cancel the program and it's really hard to justify bringing almost 55k with a min of high school education into the country.
- Removal of F2B, F3, F4 family based categories to move inline with other developed nations immigration systems such as Canada [1].
> - Country of Birth caps abolished for Green Cards. Impossible to justify this as it doesn't serve the intended purpose since AC21 was passed.
You are saying that since, for example, Indians can remain indeterminately as long as they are employed, they are de facto kind of like in a green card situation already, therefore country caps don't make sense?
That would mean then that every other country wait will go up for over a decade, with all the backlog that India has (1.2M vs 140k EB green cards per year).
That's right. Individuals from every country should be subject to the same set of rules. If the backlog is to be a century, it is to be borne by everyone.
No, it shouldn't. Stuff like recapture has no likelihood of passing. The reason country caps exist is precisely because everyone wants to carve out some provisions for their favorite group in hopes of getting the mythical comprehensive immigration reform. A one sentence bill on this matter has better odds of passing if it were to ever come to a vote. There is really no tenable position in favor of country based discrimination. The challenge is getting it to a vote.
