Daily Archives: November 27, 2011

Immigration Blog

Small House Bill on Per Country Limits Could Mean Big Changes

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Out of the more than 300 million people residing in the United States, it is likely fewer than 1 percent realize highly skilled foreign nationals endure long waits for green cards. On the other hand, those aware of the long waits likely are personally affected, either because they or a family member are the ones waiting. For those waiting the longest for green cards, on a scale of 1 to 10 the issue is an off the charts “50.”

Sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), HR 3012, “The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act,” is a small bill by any standards. In recent years, various bills to change U.S. health care or immigration policy have reached lengths of 500 to 1,000 pages. In contrast, H.R. 3012 is barely 6 pages in length. Yet since it may have a legitimate chance of becoming law, it could have a bigger impact on people’s lives than bills 100 times greater in length. (A copy of H.R. 3012 can be found here.)

What Would the Bill Do?

After a transition lasting three years, HR 3012 would eliminate the per country limit for employment-based immigrants. Under the law, employment-based immigration is limited annually to 140,000. In addition, per country caps generally limit the number of employment-based immigrants to 7 percent of the total (except if immigrant visas would otherwise go unused). Because of their large populations, India and China are most negatively affected by these limits. As a result, highly educated Indian and Chinese nationals wait longer for employment-based green cards than their peers from other countries.

Under H.R. 3012, in fiscal years 2012, 2013 and 2014, no more than 85 percent of employment-based immigrant visas could go to nationals of one country. That was designed to prevent Indian nationals, who as a group have been waiting the longest, from potentially using up all the employment-based green cards. Still, Indian and Chinese nationals will be the greatest beneficiaries of the legislation.

The legislation would also increase the per country limit for family-sponsored immigrants to 15 percent (from the current 7 percent). That will primarily benefit nationals from Mexico and the Philippines, many waiting more than a decade in the sibling and adult children categories.

Likely Impact

The bill is likely to shorten the wait times for Indians and Chinese in both the employment-based second preference (EB-2) and employment-based third preference (EB-3). A recent analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy (found here) concluded: “A key part of any solution to reducing wait times is to eliminate the per country limit for employment-based immigrants . . . Eliminating the per country limit would reduce the typical wait for Indians applying today in the EB-3 category from 70 to 12 years. While 12 years is still too long, it would be a welcome reform that would provide green cards for Indian and Chinese professionals waiting the longest in the EB-3 and EB-2 (employment second preference) categories and equalize the wait times in the EB-2 category at about two to three years without regard to country of origin (as opposed to potential waits of 6 years or more for Chinese and Indian nationals in the EB-2 category).”

The House Markup

For a bill to move forward in the legislative process it usually must be “marked up” in committee. In an October 27, 2011 House Judiciary Committee mark-up, H.R. 3012 passed by a voice vote. (That means it had sufficient support that no registered vote was deemed necessary.) Some amendments were ruled out of order and no significant amendments passed to change the core of the bill. The full transcript of the House markup can be found here.

Next Steps

The next step for the legislation is to be voted on by the entire House of Representatives. If the bill passes the House, it would then go to the US Senate. If H.R. 3012 passes the Senate, it would be the first bill to improve high-skill immigration to pass Congress in several years.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Pakistan’s Intransigence over Prosecution of Perpetrators of the Mumbai Terror Strikes is Hampering Rapprochement

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Three years ago, on November 26, 2008, ten Lashkar-e-Tayebba terrorists, trained, equipped, sponsored and directed by Pakistan’s ISI, landed by boat at Mumbai and carried out audacious strikes on four iconic targets before nine of them were eliminated by Indian security forces. Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor, was tried by a Special Court and has been sentenced to death. Despite the voluminous evidence provided to Pakistan about the perpetrators and the planners of the diabolical strikes by India, and corroborated by independent investigations conducted by the United States and Israel, the Pakistan government has failed to act against any of them.

Writing in the Hindu last week, Praveen Swami stated, “Sajid Mir, Lashkar commander who crafted the assault plan, has been reported by both the United States and India’s intelligence services as operating out of his family home near the Garrison Club in Lahore; Pakistan’s Federal Investigations Agency hasn’t yet got around to paying him a visit. Muzammil Bhat, who trained the assault team, is claimed by Pakistan to be a fugitive, though two journalists who went looking for the terror commander in Muzaffarabad located him without great effort. Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, sole senior Lashkar operative held for his alleged role in the attacks, has continued to communicate with his organisation from prison. Pakistan hasn’t, tellingly, even sought to question David Headley, Pakistani-American jihadist who has provided the investigators with a detailed insider account of the attacks — including the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence in directing them.”

Pakistan’s intransigence in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes to justice does not augur well for the recently resumed Composite Dialogue Process. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stated that he will travel to Pakistan only after the terrorists who attacked Mumbai are convicted by Pakistani courts. Even Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of State has expressed her reservations about the Pakistan government’s “continuing failure, in our view, to fulfil all of the requirements necessary for prosecution related to the Mumbai attacks.” Unless Pakistan makes serious efforts to prosecute the terrorists and their handlers, the gains in the relationship made recently due to the announcement of MFN status by Pakistan and the proposed liberalisation of the Visa regime will lose value.

Within India too the follow up action to prevent another Mumbai-type terror strike has left much to be desired. The government had launched five major initiatives to shore up counter-terrorism capabilities. The first of these was to decentralise the deployment of the National Security Guards (NSG) – the agency that had eliminated the terrorists holed up in two hotels and the Jewish centre at Mumbai – to the major metropolitan centres besides Delhi so as to reduce the time taken to react against a terrorist strike. This has been done though the NSG commandos continue to face accommodation problems. The government has set up the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for post-incident investigation of major terrorist strikes. Unlike the U.S. FBI, the NIA lacks a counter-terrorism punch and cannot, therefore, assist in the prevention of terrorist strikes. It is to be hoped that the NIA will not be politicised like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CB).

While some efforts have been made to enhance coastal security, these efforts have fallen much short of the desired capabilities and India’s long coastline remains vulnerable to attacks from the sea. This was demonstrated with telling effect when an abandoned ship drifted all the way across the Arabian Sea to beach on the Mumbai coast without being detected by either the Indian Navy or the Coast Guard or the Marine Police.

Intelligence gathering, analysis, assessment and dissemination still need to be improved by an order of magnitude. The functioning of the existing Multi-agency Centre (MAC) has been streamlined but Home Minister P Chidambaram’s initiatives to establish a National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) to coordinate all counter-terrorism efforts and a National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) database to maintain widely shared records of all terrorism-related intelligence and activities, are still to see the light of day because of Centre-State issues and inter-ministerial turf battles.

Clearly, India’s counter-terrorism responses continue to resemble a lumbering elephant, rather than a tiger ready to pounce.

Immigration Blog

Stuck In Immigration – Immigration Issue

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Every four years usually coinciding with election season, the American people have the privilege of being subject to unintelligible histrionics on the issue of immigration by both contenders for elected office and editorialists.  Candidates from all political quarters tend to treat immigration as an electoral issue for their district rather than a national strategic issue for the country, and therefore many merely choose to master the art of being opaque without sounding evasive, not the least bit interested in developing a realistic policy framework so long as the fewest number of constituents have been alienated.

If we wish to break a cycle in which we are all freely able to talk about immigration reform with only meek expectations that anything would be done, we should first demand an honest dialogue that examines the issue not just from one communities parochial interests—because immigration becomes far too easy to demagogue, and intelligent debate inevitably gets replaced by populism that throws up various quack remedies ranging from mass deportations to a completely open border.

This type of ad hominem debate is not healthy for America or India, so let’s resist indulging in tired ‘feel-good’ clichés about immigrants being the most hard-working, talented, and loyal people in society.  Immigrants are like any other large demographic group: there are many individuals that are wonderful, and there are some that are not so.  So let’s look only at facts.

In the last twenty years, nearly 1 in 4 new public American companies were founded by immigrants, including technology conglomerates like Google, Sun, PayPal, eBay, Intel, Tesla Motors, and Yahoo.  This has translated into hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs for American citizens, that also support hundreds of thousands of more jobs at the support, administrative, and unskilled levels, and billions in both foreign direct investment in U.S. infrastructure and tax revenue to the American government.  An American economic success achieved by not being myopic and lowering impediments for those with provable human capital.

It is a vital American national security and strategic interest that both domestic and foreign human capital should have minimal barriers towards entrepreneurship.  Current regulations which link legal status towards employment with a single firm and demand obtrusively high levels of capital backing as a prerequisite for founding a company actually encourage repatriation of skilled labor with no tangible benefit to the domestic workforce.  Even in a credit constrained global economy, an EB-5 Visa requires an investment petition backed by $1 million and the initial creation of ten domestic jobs for U.S. nationals.  Most high-tech startups begin with less than $50,000 initial investment.

Well paying jobs in America for college graduates will not come in abundance from stimulus packages, protectionism, or changes in the tax code.  America could afford higher barriers towards starting companies when there were few other places in the world where honest and innovative people could prosper, but that paradigm has now eroded.  The cornerstone of American success is that creative and intelligent people can commercialize their talents, and we should not throw away our competitive edge in attracting and enabling those who can create jobs.