New CIR bill is a disaster for EB aspirants, take action now ...

The fact that immigration attorneys are screaming against the bill make me a supporter of the bill. Could it be that IV interest is aligned with theirs? If backlog is cleared and new, transparent rules are set both groups stand to lose something.
 
I really don't care what IV thinks.
But new bill might cause some damage on the US in the future.

This is the column from SJ mercury I read a few days ago.

http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5994151

NO RESIDENCY?
WORLD ELITE WOULD HAVE TO GET IN LINE
By Anthony Faiola and Robin Shulman
Washington Post
Article Launched: 05/26/2007 01:29:37 AM PDT

NEW YORK - Would America open its doors for the next Albert Einstein? Under the new immigration reform bill, the answer is maybe, but maybe not.

For years, foreign-born Nobel Prize winners, corporate officers and the top talents in sports, arts and sciences have had a fast-track to permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship in the United States. In the name of attracting the world's greatest and brightest, authorities have granted these luminaries priority access to green cards under a little-known provision offered to "aliens of extraordinary abilities."

It has provided a way for a host of notable foreigners - from John Lennon and Yoko Ono to Venezuelan-born Yankees' star Bobby Abreu - to make America their home.

But the bill now being debated in Congress does away with the special "EB-1" preferred status category, effectively forcing foreign VIPs to take a number and get in line with everyone else. They would be subject to the same complex point system to determine their eligibility - assessing education levels, English abilities, experience in the United States and other factors - as any engineer from India or farmworker from Mexico.

New hurdles

Although the new bill has come under fire for being elitist - tipping the scales toward better educated immigrants with good English - the elimination of the EB-1 category would effectively mean that the most elite foreigners seeking to build lives
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in the United States would face new hurdles.

"It was almost like having a Gold Card or an entrance to a private club, but under this new bill, you won't have that anymore," said Muzaffar Chishti, an immigration specialist at New York University. "If they want to come here on a permanent basis, they will certainly be in a more disadvantaged position than they were in the past."

Leading critics of the bill say it is fraught with problems for top universities, Fortune 500 companies, sports recruiters and cultural institutions seeking to lure global leaders in their fields to work in the United States. Though many such candidates would rise to the top of the point system based on their academic backgrounds and language skills, experts say gaining permanent residency would be by no means assured. They note that even Nobel Prize winners occasionally have weak English skills, while highly skilled athletes and musicians often bypass traditional schooling and do not possess high school or university degrees.

Consider this: If Bill Gates - who dropped out of Harvard - were foreign born and subject to the new point system, would Microsoft be able to hire him to live and work in the United States?

"There is no importance being placed on the intangible talents of a Chinese pianist or a Latin American baseball star," said immigration attorney Jonathan Ginsburg, who represents leading foreign-born musicians. "My overall impression is that the Senate proposes to de-emphasize ability - extraordinary ability - in favor of paper qualification and a narrow range of experience."

`Priority' status

Last year, 36,960 individuals and family members were granted "priority" permanent resident status under the "extraordinary abilities" category. Under the new 100-point system outlined in the bill, both "extraordinary or ordinary" abilities in specialized fields would offer, at most, eight additional points to a candidate. That is less than the 10 points awarded to those applicants holding a two-year college degree.

"Every effort has been made to create a balanced system," said a Senate Republican leadership aide who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue. "The aim is to focus efforts on attracting those immigrants who have the combination of skills, education, and English language proficiency that will make them productive Americans."

But the prospect puts some rarefied institutions on edge.

Penny Rosser, director of the international scholars office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said MIT on average processes as many as 20 EB-1 applications each year for leading foreign-born scholars. She would not discuss the immigration status of individual Nobel Prize winners and other luminaries at MIT, but doing away with the "fast-track" system for such scholars, she said, could exacerbate green card delays that already run up to almost three years for some applicants. Worse, the new system would greatly reduce the weight of intangible talents and a scholar's fame in the field when applications are considered.

Critics said U.S. companies could be at risk of losing top foreign-born talent to overseas competitors. Elizabeth E. Stern, an immigration lawyer at Baker & McKenzie, said one of her current clients, a Canadian, is in the process of getting EB-1 status to head one of seven divisions of a major U.S. electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley. Like several top executives in his field, she said, the client - who she would not name - does not have advanced degrees.

Losing out

"This guy is one of a half dozen people in this world who is up to the job of heading a division of a multibillion-dollar behemoth. Now you're going to say that because he has no degree he doesn't have enough points to stay?" Stern said. "These are exceptional people, and by not treating them as such this country stands to lose."

In the balance, observers say, are people like Jasvindar Singh, 42, a cardiologist from Fiji who got a green card this year after receiving "extraordinary ability" status in 2006. While in the United States on a series of temporary visas, he pioneered a new treatment for inserting a specific kind of tubing into arteries to treat heart blockages.

"You have people who have new ideas, who are involved in teaching local people to advance medical care," he said. "Extraordinary ability status helps not only them, but also their students, their patients, and medicine at large. And those are the people you cannot lump together with people applying for family reasons or economic reasons just to get into this country."

Professional sports organizations, agents and players groups were still assessing the impact on athletes, but the short-term impact is likely to be limited in some fields. Most foreign-born professional baseball players, for instance, come to the United States on temporary "team" visas that anticipate their ultimate return to their home nation. But some - like the Yankees star right fielder Abreu, according to his agent - have used the EB-1 status to win permanent residency. That avenue would become far tougher for many sports stars without advanced degrees and excellent English skills.

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The fact that immigration attorneys are screaming against the bill make me a supporter of the bill. Could it be that IV interest is aligned with theirs? If backlog is cleared and new, transparent rules are set both groups stand to lose something.


Totally agree!
Interesting article in WSJ
Welcome to U.S.A. --
If You're a Shepherd

A quirk of history and a new law could make
immigration easier for a vanishing trade
By BARRY NEWMAN
May 19, 2007; Page A1

Twin Falls, Idaho

Julio Cruz, a shepherd, lives in a covered wagon on the high desert about 15 miles from here. A somber Peruvian in a floppy hat and an overlarge parka, he works full-time under a special visa and three-year contract for a sheep grower named John Noh. Without Mr. Noh's permission, Mr. Cruz can't work for anyone else.

"If everything goes well, I'll stay for a couple of contracts," he says. "There isn't much work in Peru."


WSJ
Since February, Julio Cruz, a 48-year-old from Peru, has cared for sheep and lambs owned by a farmer outside Twin Falls, Idaho.
From March to November, in the high deserts and higher mountains of the West, men like Mr. Cruz tend their sheep all day, all night, all week. The U.S. has about 1,500 shepherds. Most come as guest workers from Chile, Mexico or Peru. Their legal wage ranges from $650 a month in Wyoming to $1,350 in California. Here in Idaho, Mr. Cruz earns $750.

The U.S. also has tens of thousands of legal less-skilled guest workers on farms, timber stands and summer resorts, most of them allowed into the country for just a few months a year. Alone among these workers, shepherds can hold year-round jobs, bringing their sheep down to the farm for lambing all winter and up to the desert in spring. Like other guests, shepherds must go home when their jobs go bad. They aren't offered any route toward becoming American citizens.

Now Congress may change that. A little-noticed clause folded into the immigration overhaul announced by key senators and the White House on Thursday would allow shepherds to apply for a green card after three years on the range -- no sponsor needed -- and work anywhere until it came through. Thousands of dairy workers may obtain the same right.


As Congress works on an immigration overhaul, one provision would let shepherds apply for a green card after three years. See a video report about shepherds in Idaho who may benefit from the proposed changes.
The provision is part of a much broader overhaul that could spread year-round guest workers throughout the economy. The Senate will open its debate on the measure next week, even as negotiations on the details continue. The bill as it stands also offers new guest workers a roundabout shot at citizenship, though the path is not as direct as the one proposed for shepherds.

The rancor is far from over, however, and the issue has split Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress. Legislators still must finesse a difference of opinion at the heart of immigration history: Should new arrivals expect to stay permanently or go back home?

For reasons of politics and tradition, the sheep industry has felt the effects of both ends of the argument. Shepherds of today fit the formula favored by those who want immigration cut back: They come to do a particular job and leave when their bosses no longer need them.

On Friday, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona raised objections to the shepherd provision, lobbyists and Senate staffers said. The best way to meet the country's future need for unskilled labor, Sen. Kyl said recently, "is through a temporary-worker system that allows people to come to the United States when work is available that they want to do and is not being done by Americans -- but on a temporary basis."

Shepherds of the past, by contrast, were given a promise of permanent residence. Green cards in hand, generations of them -- mostly Basques from Spain -- left their sheep behind and joined the middle class. That's the formula favored by those who say guest workers should eventually win the freedom to sink their American roots.

In the 1880s, when wool and mutton clothed and fed the world, the U.S. sheep population was 51 million. Easterners kept sheep on the farm and Texans fenced them into pastures. But on wide-open ranges from California to the Dakotas, growers needed manpower -- more than any other livestock enterprise.

Basques came legally to herd sheep until 1924, when the quota for Spanish immigrants was eliminated. Then, as John and Mark Bieter tell it in "An Enduring Legacy: The Story of Basques in Idaho," hundreds came illegally. Yet by the early '40s, Western sheep owners faced a labor shortage. With sheep numbers peaking at 56 million, they had the clout in Congress to get their shepherds legalized, and to win admission for many more.

In 1952, when Congress created the H2 visa for seasonal workers, Sen. Patrick McCarran of Nevada, a state with many sheep, pushed through a clause allowing shepherds to stay year-round. Unlike the other workers, immigrant shepherds also won the right to apply for a green card.


Julio Cruz, shepherd, on the high desert outside Twin Falls, Idaho
It was a right that Jose Mari Artiach was quick to exercise. Today he owns a Boise restaurant where a mural celebrates his first American job in an image of bucolic nostalgia: a shepherd standing watch above his sheep as they graze on a mountainside. The shepherd is Mr. Artiach, who was in his bar one evening, having a glass of wine.

"I worked sheep four years," he said. "Then I thought I was too smart to work sheep, so I started driving a truck."

That was 1972. Mr. Artiach, 62 years old, came to Idaho with the last of the Spanish Basques who had herded sheep in America since the California Gold Rush. His contract paid $240 a month.

In just four years, Mr. Artiach had his green card. By 1982, he owned seven trucks. Then he became a hay broker, bought a dairy herd and two farms. Last year, he opened the restaurant. His wife, Miren, whose Basque father also came to herd sheep, is Idaho's deputy secretary of state.

Lino Zabala, sipping wine across the table, married Miren's sister. He landed here in 1969, herded sheep until his green card came through in 1973, quit to mine gold, then studied mechanics and spent 32 years working in irrigation. He's retired at 60.

Clinking his brother-in-law's glass, Mr. Artiach said, "We took chances to go abroad. So success comes with that, maybe."


Jose Mari Artiach
When Congress took up illegal immigration in 1986, everything changed. Spanish ruler Francisco Franco, who had repressed Basques, was dead, and Spain was prospering. Instead of Basques, poor Latinos, for the most part, were herding sheep. Congress that year preserved their visas and the U.S. Labor Department's system of setting their wages. But it took their route to a green card away.

Bruce Goldstein, director of a Washington interest group, Farmworker Justice, blames that switch on lobbying by sheep growers -- "a selfish group of employers" intent on keeping their shepherds from working elsewhere, he says. James Holt, a lawyer who has represented growers for decades, simply recalls that "somewhere along the line" the green-card arrangement "evaporated."

Shepherds still come to the U.S. under a visa that lets them stay year-round. But they can stay only as long as they tend sheep.

On the high desert of southern Idaho, the sheetmetal top of Mr. Cruz's sheepwagon was a glint in the distance as Mr. Noh, his boss, approached in his pickup one recent morning. Mr. Noh, 40, runs two bands of 1,000 ewes from a farm that his German great-grandfather began in 1915. In spring, they graze with their lambs on a 5,000-acre federal lease. In summer, they move higher, into Sawtooth National Forest. Then the fattened lambs are trucked to California for slaughter.

Mr. Noh parked his pickup at the wagon and waited as Mr. Cruz walked up with his collie. The sheep, far behind them, were puffs on the wheat grass. Mr. Noh comes by twice a week, bringing food and supplies. This time he carried two drums of fresh water. What else did his shepherd need?

Mr. Cruz climbed up into the wagon and came out holding his last can of Vienna sausages. Mr. Noh jotted down the order in his shirt-pocket notebook. The shepherd, who speaks no English, told his boss, who speaks a little Spanish, that he'd seen coyotes. Mr. Noh asked how many. Mr. Cruz stood silently. Finally, he said, "Uno."

"I got to get him a rifle," said Mr. Noh.

Times in the sheep camp aren't quite so hard for Mr. Cruz as they were for Boise's Basques. He listens to Spanish on a short-wave radio, even calls Peru on a cellphone. But if he aspires to drive a truck or own a restaurant, his only route now is the one taken by scores of Latino shepherds each year: run off and work illegally.

Otherwise, Mr. Cruz is stuck. He flew to Idaho in February on a visa arranged, paid for and sponsored by Mr. Noh. When Mr. Cruz's one-year visa expires, Mr. Noh can roll it over year after year. But if the shepherding provision in the current immigration bills finds its way into law, Mr. Cruz could apply for his green card after three years on the range. In other words, he would get what the Basques had. It's a chance that today's shepherds may jump at, but one sheep owners might take some time getting used to.

Raising dust in his pickup on another day, Mr. Noh was delivering groceries to Tony Villaizan, who is 35 and comes from the Peruvian Andes. He's been herding sheep in Idaho for nearly 10 years.

As Mr. Noh pulled up to the sheepwagon, Mr. Villaizan stood in its doorway wearing a biker T-shirt and showing a new set of white dentures. He sleeps on a bunk beneath a crocheted coverlet. A tractor battery under a fold-down tabletop powers a light bulb. He boils rice and barley tea on a gas ring. A small wood stove supplies the heat. A horse, grazing outside, supplies the transportation.


Julio Cruz's sheepwagon
He rises early to rouse his sheep from their bed ground. He stays with them, on horseback, as they move toward water. After they "noon up" and nap for three hours, he guides them toward fresh grass. At nightfall, the sheep bed near camp for protection. He cooks dinner, drinks a warm beer, and sometimes puts in a brief call to his family. He has two daughters in Peru.

"I did the same work when I was a kid, staying out like this," Mr. Villaizan said with an interpreter's help. Pay started at $160 a month in Peru and topped out at $350. In the U.S., he made $650 to start. Mr. Noh pays $800, enough to finance a house in Peru and a set of teeth. "I'm comfortable with sheep," said Mr. Villaizan.

"If you got a green card," asked Mr. Noh, "what would you do?"

"Even then, I'd work in sheep," his shepherd said.

"This is my favorite man, right here," said Mr. Noh.

Then Mr. Villaizan added, "I'd like to make more money."

More money, though, is what Mr. Noh and most other sheep growers in the West say they can't offer. Their fortunes, and their influence, have gone the way of the country's taste for lamb.

Americans eat just a pound of it a year. Thanks to synthetics, demand for wool is a 10th of what it was in 1950. The sheep population has dwindled to six million, and with it the growers' political capital. In the latest immigration haggling, they haven't been ignored -- shepherds will get the same long stay and monthly pay. But restoring their green cards wasn't on the industry's wish list.

"That's nothing we pursued or asked for," says Peter Orwick, one of its lobbyists. Rather, the green-card clause was inserted by Western legislators as a nod to groups like Farmworker Justice, who argue that visas for full-time guest workers ought to lead to permanent residence. A few weeks ago, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont added dairy workers to the clause, greatly expanding its scope.

In the compromise presented to the Senate on Thursday, the possibility of permanence was extended to all future guest workers. A limited number could apply for green cards under a merit-based points system. Unlike skilled workers, however, most would ultimately have to go home. For some conservatives and labor unions, even those terms are too generous, while pro-immigration groups condemned the proposal as an affront to American values.

"Indenture" is the word Mr. Goldstein of Farmworker Justice uses to describe the guest-worker deal. For shepherds, he wants nothing short of a legal means to come in from the desert. "For people who want out of those jobs," he says, "that means they can get out and will get out."

Toward sundown, Mr. Noh left the sheep camp and drove to Twin Falls for a beer at Jaker's, where the rack of lamb ($23) comes from Australia. What would he do if Mr. Villaizan got his green card?

"I'd sit down with him and offer him as much as I could," Mr. Noh said. "I'd try to help him bring his daughters here. If I could teach him to drive a little better, I'd move him into a position where he'd be camp tending, like I'm doing now. That's my hope for Tony. I'd do the business end. Tony would move up."

When Mr. Noh thinks about his shepherd's future, he has a role model in mind: Ambrosio Aspiazu. He came to America to herd sheep for Mr. Noh's family in 1960. When his green card came through, he became their camp tender and then their foreman. As a child, Mr. Noh trailed after him, learning all there was to know about sheep.

Mr. Aspiazu had saved half a million dollars by the time he retired, in 2000. Last year, he sold his house in Idaho and moved back to the Basque country, where he was born.

Write to Barry Newman at barry.newman@wsj.com
 
The article is just another internally inconsistent pamphlet. What is the problem - Abreu would not get his EB1 approved and Yankees would have to send him home? Speculation about a college dropouts is silly, just ruins any credibility of the article and the author. After all, there were almost 40K approvals for EB1 last year. How many of them were Nobel prize winners or Gates-like entrepreneurs?
 
The article is just another internally inconsistent pamphlet. What is the problem - Abreu would not get his EB1 approved and Yankees would have to send him home? Speculation about a college dropouts is silly, just ruins any credibility of the article and the author. After all, there were almost 40K approvals for EB1 last year. How many of them were Nobel prize winners or Gates-like entrepreneurs?

Do you think the number is important when it comes to the best and the brightest ?
If even only one of Nobel Prize winners could not get to the US because of the system, it is a big loss to the US.
These people has a lot of influence, i.e. research, reputation of the university and bringing the best interest to the country etc. and it attracts the follower.
Similarly losing 1 EB1 is definitely a loss to the US in the long run and that could happen if distinguished people does not get priority.

Having decent concept is important when something new is implemented. If the US wants leading edge, they should have concept to give the priority to luminaries.
 
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Agreed.
Hence the point system that brings in order and favors the best over the second cousins.
But the article is built on marginal cases and sheer speculation. Nobel prize winner with insufficient language skills and a Gates-level college-dropout entrepreneur wishing to get GC through EB.
 
Gary Endelman is saying there is a possibility there will be NO EB gcs in next year, till Oct 2008!


"The end of employer-sponsored immigration and the inauguration of the points system do not take place at the same time. No kidding, there are two different dates when the old is no good and the new becomes available. If you can contain your excitement and read the finer points of Section 502(d)(1) of S. 1348, you will discover that the point system does not take effect until the first day of the fiscal year following enactment, unless (and there always is one) this is less than 270 days. What then? Not to fear. In that case, the point system does not "go live" until the first day of the FOLLOWING fiscal year. Keep reading! The point system in clause (1) is made expressly subject to clause (2) which has few surprises in store. It is not for the uninitiated or the faint of heart. These tender souls should protect their blood pressure and keep on reading. Pursuant to Section 502(d)(2), only those employment-based immigrant petitions on Form I-140 filed before the introduction of S. 1348 on May 15th will remain valid and serve as the basis for an immigrant visa after enactment. So what, you say? Well, suppose that President Bush signs the bill on September 10th 2007. That is the date of enactment. Now, the points system waits until October 1, 2008, the first day of the second fiscal year following enactment. From September 10, 2007 until October 1, 2008, over one year, we will have no employment-based green cards! You heard me right friend, no employer sponsorship based on anything after May 15th 2007 and no points system. This is Pat Buchanan's dream come true- an entire fiscal year without any green cards being issued on the basis of employment!

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2007,0530-endelman.shtm
 
Gary Endelman is saying there is a possibility there will be NO EB gcs in next year, till Oct 2008!


"The end of employer-sponsored immigration and the inauguration of the points system do not take place at the same time. No kidding, there are two different dates when the old is no good and the new becomes available. If you can contain your excitement and read the finer points of Section 502(d)(1) of S. 1348, you will discover that the point system does not take effect until the first day of the fiscal year following enactment, unless (and there always is one) this is less than 270 days. What then? Not to fear. In that case, the point system does not "go live" until the first day of the FOLLOWING fiscal year. Keep reading! The point system in clause (1) is made expressly subject to clause (2) which has few surprises in store. It is not for the uninitiated or the faint of heart. These tender souls should protect their blood pressure and keep on reading. Pursuant to Section 502(d)(2), only those employment-based immigrant petitions on Form I-140 filed before the introduction of S. 1348 on May 15th will remain valid and serve as the basis for an immigrant visa after enactment. So what, you say? Well, suppose that President Bush signs the bill on September 10th 2007. That is the date of enactment. Now, the points system waits until October 1, 2008, the first day of the second fiscal year following enactment. From September 10, 2007 until October 1, 2008, over one year, we will have no employment-based green cards! You heard me right friend, no employer sponsorship based on anything after May 15th 2007 and no points system. This is Pat Buchanan's dream come true- an entire fiscal year without any green cards being issued on the basis of employment!

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2007,0530-endelman.shtm

This is not at all fair. Is this is in the final bill?
 
1. Points bases system is +++
2. De-linking employer and GC process +++
3. Family sponsorship( Dint dig deep into it) +-
4. EB1.. there are extra points for PHDs etc.. +-
5. college dropouts... tell me how many college dropouts are bill gates??

my 2 cents..
 
1. Points bases system is +++
2. De-linking employer and GC process +++
3. Family sponsorship( Dint dig deep into it) +-
4. EB1.. there are extra points for PHDs etc.. +-
5. college dropouts... tell me how many college dropouts are bill gates??

my 2 cents..

Do you know how many people will qualify for GC? The answer is millions. Everyone will be in the same queue. To get your GC, even though you have PhD, it might take100 years. That is my worry.

There should categories like EB-1 who has more than 75 points; EB-2 who has points between 60 - 75 and EB3 who has points between 50 - 60 and so on. This will ensure that the highly qualified people get their GC first and it’s fair.
 
I don't believe that that is true.
I would think that they would continue to use the "old system" until it is superseded by the "new system" in Oct 08.
 
Leading critics of the bill say it is fraught with problems for top universities, Fortune 500 companies, sports recruiters and cultural institutions seeking to lure global leaders in their fields to work in the United States. Though many such candidates would rise to the top of the point system based on their Facademic backgrounds and language skills, experts say gaining permanent residency would be by no means assured. They note that even Nobel Prize winners occasionally have weak English skills, while highly skilled athletes and musicians often bypass traditional schooling and do not possess high school or university degrees.

Consider this: If Bill Gates - who dropped out of Harvard - were foreign born and subject to the new point system, would Microsoft be able to hire him to live and work in the United States?


Fellow ladies and gentlemen, this bill has just been owned by this logic and its amazing example.
 
The article is just another internally inconsistent pamphlet. What is the problem - Abreu would not get his EB1 approved and Yankees would have to send him home? Speculation about a college dropouts is silly, just ruins any credibility of the article and the author. After all, there were almost 40K approvals for EB1 last year. How many of them were Nobel prize winners or Gates-like entrepreneurs?


I personally know two EB1 based GC holders who have ordinary degrees but manipulated the system enough. These guys are "multi-national managers".
 
Frankly, this new CIR bill is nothing but restoration of common sense and rational thinking.

People like Bill Gates and Nobel Winners will always find a way to get into US. For truly talented, in a flat world like today's, borders are meaning less.

Even if US closes doors for brightest and talented, it is essentially not bad news. Other countries can use that talent and play catch up with US.
 
As a rule, anytime AILA and lawyers are against something, it is good for workers.
All this BS about EB-1 and Bill Gates by the lawyers is to get away from a point based system rather than employer based since it eliminates their usefulness. Smart people will get more points if they have to. Any system that makes it a level playing field for the employers/employees should be more equitable.


Frankly, this new CIR bill is nothing but restoration of common sense and rational thinking.

People like Bill Gates and Nobel Winners will always find a way to get into US. For truly talented, in a flat world like today's, borders are meaning less.

Even if US closes doors for brightest and talented, it is essentially not bad news. Other countries can use that talent and play catch up with US.
 
WHATEVER - It will take A LONG TIME to implement.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG

So maybe for people that apply in 5 years it will be better.
Maybe for people that just applied it will be better...

But how about for somebody like me, stuck in retrogression, having been in the US for 12 years?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
 
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