Susie
10-11-2006, 02:27 AM
Legal immigrants turn to the Net
Applicants push for faster process to get green cards
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...egals1002.html
azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1002legals1002.html
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 2, 2006 12:00 AM
Alok Sharma watched from the sidelines with a mix of frustration and envy when a million people across the country marched in the spring in support of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
The India-born doctor entered the United States legally 10 years ago on a professional-worker visa. But he has been unable to become a legal permanent resident because of a years-long backlog for employment-based green cards.
"Everyone talks about the illegal immigrants. What about us who followed the law?" said Sharma, who practices medicine in Yuma.
Legal entrants who played by the rules, such as Sharma, feel overlooked in the immigration-reform debate. Now, they are growing their own movement, taking their cause to a different avenue: the Internet.
Their Web site, Immigration Voice, has grown to a 6,000-strong political force aimed at pressing Congress to raise the annual cap on employment-based green cards and call attention to the brainpower legal immigrants bring to this country. Without them, advocates say, the global competitiveness of the U.S. economy would suffer.
But with Congress fixated on border security, a bill pending that would boost green cards and reduce waits is unlikely to pass this year.
There are thousands of legal immigrants in Arizona, many in the high- tech and medical sectors, who await reform and can't help but cast a jealous eye at the attention everyone up to the White House is giving illegal immigrants.
Marching on the Net
The Web site has created a grass-roots movement made up of highly skilled legal immigrants, many of them educated in the U.S., said Aman Kapoor, an India-born program analyst at Florida State University and the Web site's founder. Many are researchers, scientists, engineers, doctors and entrepreneurs for U.S. companies, universities and businesses.
These legal immigrants help drive innovation and create jobs, Kapoor said. But a wait of up to seven years for employment-based green cards is pushing legal immigrants to seek employment in other countries with shorter waits. That could weaken the competitiveness of the U.S. workforce, he said.
The Web site allows widely scattered legal immigrants waiting for green cards to meet others in the same situation. They share information, post blogs and swap advice. With a click of a button, they can fire off Web faxes to members of Congress urging quick action on bills that could affect them. Or they can contribute money, some of which has gone to hire a Washington, D.C., public relations firm to lobby on their behalf.
"We are not marching in the streets. We are taking our efforts online to create a community," Kapoor said.
Lots of hurdles
There are about a half-million legal immigrants in the process of applying for employment-based green cards, according to Kapoor. The wait is long because applicants must jump through a series of hoops involving two federal bureaucracies, the Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. First, an employer must be willing to sponsor them. Then, the employer must prove to the Labor Department that no American could be found to fill the job, an expensive process that can take up to two years. Once the labor certification is approved, the applicant applies for a green card through Citizenship and Immigration Services. The applicant then gets in line until a green card becomes available, waiting up to five more years.
The government limits the number of employment-based green cards to 140,000 a year. No country can receive more than 7 percent of the total, creating backlogs. Immigrants from India and China, which send large numbers of professionals to the U.S., face the longest waits.
Stuck in limbo
Immigrants stuck in the green-card line often are forced to put their careers and personal lives on hold.
That's what happened to Sharma, 41, the Yuma doctor. He agreed to work for three years in Yuma, a rural area designated as having a doctor shortage, in exchange for a shot at a green card.
His green-card application was approved in January, after he completed his three-year obligation. But because he is from India, Sharma faces an additional four- to five-year wait. One of his twin sons is autistic, and Sharma would like to move to a larger city with access to better treatment. But if he does, he'll have to start the green-card process all over again.
What's more, his wife, also a physician from India, is in the U.S. on a dependant visa, which means she can't work.
Kola Akinwande, 47, another member of Immigration Voice, faces a similar situation. The database administrator from Nigeria entered the U.S. legally on a professional worker visa. He has been waiting two years for his labor certification. And he had to turn down a promotion from his employer, a medical-insurance company in Phoenix, because the application bars him from changing jobs.
Without a green card, Akinwande has to pay out-of-state tuition for his oldest son, an Arizona State University student. The higher tuition costs him $11,159 more a year than in-state.
Akinwande said he's considering offers from employers in Canada, where the wait to become a legal permanent resident takes about a year.
"Their system is based on a point system. Right now if I applied, it would take me about 12 months to get a permanent resident card. Here, you don't know how long the process will take," Akinwande said.
Shortening the wait
Immigration Voice and other advocates hope legislation will pass this year that would shorten the wait for employment-based green cards.
One bill, sponsored by Republicans John Shadegg of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, is pending in the House and Senate. The bill would raise the yearly cap on employment-based green cards to 290,000 from 140,000 and reduce the wait to about six months.
Unlike now, dependents would not be counted against the cap, freeing up more green cards for foreign national professionals.
The bill has bipartisan support. But chances are slim that it will pass this year. A similar proposal embedded in a sweeping immigration bill passed by the Senate in May later died. And for now, the House and Senate's biggest priority is tightening border security.
Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the American Council on International Personnel, a trade association, said raising the cap would help the U.S. retain its global competitiveness.
America's universities are not producing enough graduates in mathematics, the sciences and engineering to meet workforce demands, she said. In Arizona, for example, nearly 63 percent of engineering master's degrees at ASU and the University of Arizona went to foreign nationals, according to Compete America, a coalition of trade associations and high-tech companies that includes Microsoft, Motorola and Sun Microsystems.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group that advocates immigration control, said raising the cap for employment-based green cards is a bad idea. The U.S. should be providing training and investing in its own people, not importing professionals from outside the country, he said.
Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8312.
Hi
Needless to say I will be calling the reporter ! fingers crossed he writes a story about expatsvoice
Applicants push for faster process to get green cards
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...egals1002.html
azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1002legals1002.html
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 2, 2006 12:00 AM
Alok Sharma watched from the sidelines with a mix of frustration and envy when a million people across the country marched in the spring in support of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
The India-born doctor entered the United States legally 10 years ago on a professional-worker visa. But he has been unable to become a legal permanent resident because of a years-long backlog for employment-based green cards.
"Everyone talks about the illegal immigrants. What about us who followed the law?" said Sharma, who practices medicine in Yuma.
Legal entrants who played by the rules, such as Sharma, feel overlooked in the immigration-reform debate. Now, they are growing their own movement, taking their cause to a different avenue: the Internet.
Their Web site, Immigration Voice, has grown to a 6,000-strong political force aimed at pressing Congress to raise the annual cap on employment-based green cards and call attention to the brainpower legal immigrants bring to this country. Without them, advocates say, the global competitiveness of the U.S. economy would suffer.
But with Congress fixated on border security, a bill pending that would boost green cards and reduce waits is unlikely to pass this year.
There are thousands of legal immigrants in Arizona, many in the high- tech and medical sectors, who await reform and can't help but cast a jealous eye at the attention everyone up to the White House is giving illegal immigrants.
Marching on the Net
The Web site has created a grass-roots movement made up of highly skilled legal immigrants, many of them educated in the U.S., said Aman Kapoor, an India-born program analyst at Florida State University and the Web site's founder. Many are researchers, scientists, engineers, doctors and entrepreneurs for U.S. companies, universities and businesses.
These legal immigrants help drive innovation and create jobs, Kapoor said. But a wait of up to seven years for employment-based green cards is pushing legal immigrants to seek employment in other countries with shorter waits. That could weaken the competitiveness of the U.S. workforce, he said.
The Web site allows widely scattered legal immigrants waiting for green cards to meet others in the same situation. They share information, post blogs and swap advice. With a click of a button, they can fire off Web faxes to members of Congress urging quick action on bills that could affect them. Or they can contribute money, some of which has gone to hire a Washington, D.C., public relations firm to lobby on their behalf.
"We are not marching in the streets. We are taking our efforts online to create a community," Kapoor said.
Lots of hurdles
There are about a half-million legal immigrants in the process of applying for employment-based green cards, according to Kapoor. The wait is long because applicants must jump through a series of hoops involving two federal bureaucracies, the Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. First, an employer must be willing to sponsor them. Then, the employer must prove to the Labor Department that no American could be found to fill the job, an expensive process that can take up to two years. Once the labor certification is approved, the applicant applies for a green card through Citizenship and Immigration Services. The applicant then gets in line until a green card becomes available, waiting up to five more years.
The government limits the number of employment-based green cards to 140,000 a year. No country can receive more than 7 percent of the total, creating backlogs. Immigrants from India and China, which send large numbers of professionals to the U.S., face the longest waits.
Stuck in limbo
Immigrants stuck in the green-card line often are forced to put their careers and personal lives on hold.
That's what happened to Sharma, 41, the Yuma doctor. He agreed to work for three years in Yuma, a rural area designated as having a doctor shortage, in exchange for a shot at a green card.
His green-card application was approved in January, after he completed his three-year obligation. But because he is from India, Sharma faces an additional four- to five-year wait. One of his twin sons is autistic, and Sharma would like to move to a larger city with access to better treatment. But if he does, he'll have to start the green-card process all over again.
What's more, his wife, also a physician from India, is in the U.S. on a dependant visa, which means she can't work.
Kola Akinwande, 47, another member of Immigration Voice, faces a similar situation. The database administrator from Nigeria entered the U.S. legally on a professional worker visa. He has been waiting two years for his labor certification. And he had to turn down a promotion from his employer, a medical-insurance company in Phoenix, because the application bars him from changing jobs.
Without a green card, Akinwande has to pay out-of-state tuition for his oldest son, an Arizona State University student. The higher tuition costs him $11,159 more a year than in-state.
Akinwande said he's considering offers from employers in Canada, where the wait to become a legal permanent resident takes about a year.
"Their system is based on a point system. Right now if I applied, it would take me about 12 months to get a permanent resident card. Here, you don't know how long the process will take," Akinwande said.
Shortening the wait
Immigration Voice and other advocates hope legislation will pass this year that would shorten the wait for employment-based green cards.
One bill, sponsored by Republicans John Shadegg of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, is pending in the House and Senate. The bill would raise the yearly cap on employment-based green cards to 290,000 from 140,000 and reduce the wait to about six months.
Unlike now, dependents would not be counted against the cap, freeing up more green cards for foreign national professionals.
The bill has bipartisan support. But chances are slim that it will pass this year. A similar proposal embedded in a sweeping immigration bill passed by the Senate in May later died. And for now, the House and Senate's biggest priority is tightening border security.
Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the American Council on International Personnel, a trade association, said raising the cap would help the U.S. retain its global competitiveness.
America's universities are not producing enough graduates in mathematics, the sciences and engineering to meet workforce demands, she said. In Arizona, for example, nearly 63 percent of engineering master's degrees at ASU and the University of Arizona went to foreign nationals, according to Compete America, a coalition of trade associations and high-tech companies that includes Microsoft, Motorola and Sun Microsystems.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group that advocates immigration control, said raising the cap for employment-based green cards is a bad idea. The U.S. should be providing training and investing in its own people, not importing professionals from outside the country, he said.
Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8312.
Hi
Needless to say I will be calling the reporter ! fingers crossed he writes a story about expatsvoice