Call the Washington DC Phone number of the Senators. Please call between 9am & 5pm ET for maximum impact. You can get that number at this page.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm You could filter the list by particular states too. We especially need the constituents of the following Senators to reach out to them at the earliest-
Lamar Alexander (TN) - 202-224-4944
Jeff Bingaman (NM) - (202) 224-5521
Sam Brownback(KS)- (202) 224-6521
Pete Domenici (NM) - 202-224-6621
Charles Schumer (NY)- 202-224-6542
John Cornyn(TX) - 202-224-2934
WHO TO CALL(your state or other state's senators)
First, call 2 senators from your state.
Then call 5-6 senators mentioned above who are pro high skills immigration and have supported hi-tech immigration in the past.
Then call other senators if you can.
Even if a senator is not from your state and if that questions comes up during phone call, explain the reason for calling by saying that "Since Immigration laws are federal laws and every senator's vote affects us in all 50 states, your time and the senators support would be highly appreciated".
Ask for the Immigration Counsel/ Staffer
Talking Points
Request your Senator to support the Comprehensive Immigration Bill, especially those provisions that support the highly skilled immigrants. The main provisions already there to be supported are (1) Increase in Employment based greencard from 140,000 to 290,000 and (2) Provision of not counting dependents against the cap. Reiterate that all of us are LEGAL immigrants and have obeyed the laws of immigration at all times. Reiterate the fact that many of us have been waiting here for more than 5 years to get our green cards.
While this bill has several good provisions, it still does not allow Skiilled Legal Immigration applicants to apply for adjustment of status(I-485) while waiting for their Green Card. Such a provision would allow them to change employers more easily and to travel freely. Such a provision would not increase the number of greencards issued each year and would not result in a greencard coming sooner but will make the wait time for those legal immigrants in line easier due to job portability from one employer to another. Such a provision was recently passed in the Senate on an unrelated bill in December -- S 1932 but it never made it to President's desk.
This bill also makes the country limit on skilled immigrants as a hard country limit. This is a retrograde step. Earlier, the excess Green Card visas available after applying the country limit, were redistributed to those countries that had reached their limits. By making it a "hard" limit, this bill is going to make the green card process longer for skilled immigrants from some of the countries. So please request the senator to remove this hard cap provision Sec 502(2). Allowing Oversubscribed countries like India and China to used the greencards not used by other countries helps achieving the objective of visa backlogs. Not allowing them to use to unused visa numbers defeats with the intent of backlog reduction initiative as backlogs are prominent only for over-subscribed countries: India, China and Phillipines.
Thank the staffer for their time.
Post Here. Once you have called your senators, post back here so that it will motivate others to do the same.
