Food for thought for all of us.
Retrogression will get worse before it gets better. This is what the shusterman news letter said. Check it below.
As recently as December 2004, all employment-based (EB) categories for permanent residence were "current". That is, there were no backlogs.
That all started to change in January 2005 when the EB-3 category (professionals and skilled workers) backlogged three years. These backlogs are referred to as the "retrogression".
The retrogression has gradually gotten worse during the past 21 months. The October 2006 State Department Visa Bulletin reveals that the EB-3 category has now retrogressed almost 4 1/2 years. The backlogs are even greater for persons born in India and Mexico. Even the EB-2 category for advanced-degreed professionals has backlogged for persons born in India and China. See
http://shusterman.com/vb.html
In the absence of congressional action, the retrogression will get worse, probably a lot worse, before it gets better. Why?
In May 2005, President Bush, recognizing the tremendous shortage of nurses and therapists, signed a bill which "recaptured" 50,000 immigrant visas for Schedule A professionals, primarily registered nurses, physical therapists and their family members. By the end of this month, all 50,000 visas will be used up. What will happen to RNs and PTs who are still in line for green cards and those who will apply for permanent residence in the future? They will be added to the EB-3 backlog which will result in increased waiting times, perhaps to five years or more.
The total number of persons who are permitted to obtain permanent residence each year in the employment-based categories is only 140,000. Adding another 30,000 - 50,000 to the current backlogs will certainly make the retrogression more severe.
Even more problematic are the 300,000+ applications for labor certification currently pending in the Labor Department's (DOL's) Backlog Elimination Centers. DOL has pledged to take action on each of these applications within the next 18 months. Even if only 200,000 of these applications are ultimately approved, if 50% of the applicants have a spouse and one child, the number of green cards needed to accommodate them would total 300,000. This is more than double the annual cap on EB green cards. Therefore, this has the potential to make the EB-2 and EB-3 numbers regress another two years.
Finally, present laws contain hard per-country caps. This means that countries like India and China which have populations of over one billion persons each have exactly the same quotas as Monaco and Mauritius, two tiny countries which supply the U.S. with virtually no immigrants. Given that most H-1B professionals are born in India and China, the per-country quotas will exaggerate the retrogression for persons born in these countries.
If high-skilled immigrants could only come to U.S. or remain in their own countries, our country could afford to continue this backward, "Let them eat Chicken McNuggets!" approach. But various European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Persian Gulf countries are all competing for these talented individuals. Even Germany, the great bastion for engineers is seeing the number of German students studying engineering fall precipitously.
It is in our national interest to make our country the principal destination for computer professionals and scientists, for nurses, teachers and therapists, and for businessmen and physicians from all over the world.
The Senate immigration bill (S.2611) would have greatly expanded both the outdated employment and family-based immigration systems and eased the per-country limitations. Unfortunately, House Republicans, worried that they might lose their majority in the mid-term elections, refused to negotiate a compromise bill with the Senate.
Perhaps, in the "lame duck" session of Congress which will occur after the November elections, reason will prevail and Congress will pass amendments to fix our legal immigration system.
But just in case, be sure to keep the heat on members of Congress, and perhaps, they will see the light.
