Update from Senator Dick Durbin on S386

*got the following email response from senator:*

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 (S. 386). I appreciate hearing from you.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, introduced by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to increase the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas and eliminate the per-country cap for employment-based immigrant visas. The legislation does not increase the number of immigrant visas granted annually.
On December 18, 2019, I came to the Senate floor and announced a bipartisan agreement with Senator Lee to amend the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. The agreement would make three changes to improve this bill.
First, it would better protect immigrants and their families who are stuck in the employment-based immigrant visa backlog by allowing immigrant workers and their immediate family members to be eligible for “early filing” for their green cards. Immigrant workers would not receive their green cards early, but they would be able to switch jobs and travel without losing immigration status. The amendment also protects the children of immigrant workers from “aging out” of green-card eligibility so they would not face deportation while they are waiting for a green card.
Second, the amendment would reserve 4,600 green cards on an annual basis for dependent family members and new immigrant workers who are stuck overseas and would not not be eligible for early filing. This number is based on the approximate number of people who apply for employment green cards from overseas each year who are not otherwise accounted for in the bill.
Finally, the amendment would address abuse of H-1B temporary work visas by prohibiting a company from hiring additional H-1B workers if the company’s workforce has more than 50 employees and more than 50 percent temporary workers. This commonsense bipartisan reform would stop outsourcing firms from abusing the H-1B visa to exploit immigrant workers and offshore American jobs.
Our legal immigration system does not provide nearly enough immigrant visas, also known as green cards. As a result, immigrants are stuck in the backlog for many years. This is a hardship for families who are caught in immigration limbo. Close to four million future Americans are on the State Department's immigrant visa waiting list, in addition to hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States who are also waiting for green cards. However, under current law, only 226,000 family green cards and 140,000 employment green cards are available annually.
The solution to this problem is increasing the number of green cards to eliminate this backlog. I have introduced the Resolving Extended Limbo for Immigrant Employees and Families (RELIEF) Act (S. 2603), legislation that would eliminate the entire current family and employment green card backlog within five years by increasing the number of green cards. This legislation would help keep American families together by classifying spouses and children of LPRs as immediate relatives and exempting derivative beneficiaries of employment-based petitions from annual green card limits, protect aging out children who qualify for LPR status based on a parent’s immigration petition, and lift country caps.
I will keep your views in mind as the debate continues. I will continue to work to fix our broken immigration system.
Thank you for contacting my office. Please feel free to keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator