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Immigration July 17, 2007, 12:01AM EST

The Gandhi Protests Pay Off

(page 2 of 2)

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A July 13 letter from Oracle to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff urges a reversal of the decision not to accept more green-card applications

On July 6, a Chicago immigration law firm filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against the government. The American Immigration Law Foundation, a nonprofit group, said it is preparing a complaint for a separate class-action suit.

Perhaps the most acute pressure on the Bush Administration is coming from Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose congressional district includes Silicon Valley. After the State Dept. reversal, Lofgren criticized the decision and on July 11 sent a letter asking for detailed information on how and why the decision was made. She requested "all correspondence, e-mails, memoranda, notes, field guidance or other documentation relating to the issuance" of the reversal notice. Kuck, of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. (AILA), speculates that the last thing the Administration wants is for the details of the "bureaucratic, nightmarish snafu" to become public.

Government Hurdles

With the protests and other pressures, the Administration is now seeking some sort of compromise solution. The fundamental problem is the mismatch between temporary work visas and permanent residency papers. Tens of thousands of foreign workers enter the U.S. on work visas each year, and many apply for green cards. But current government rules limit the number of people who can be admitted to the U.S. from any particular country to 9,800. The result is that for larger countries, including India and China, the wait for permanent U.S. residency now stretches for years. As they wait, visa workers are required to maintain the same job and salary, or they are bumped back to the long queue. That leaves many of the most educated and talented immigrants feeling stuck, sometimes to the point of hopelessness (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/21/07, "One Easy Fix for Immigration").

The situation has been aggravated because the U.S. government has not been giving out all the green cards it can, despite the backlog. For example, a spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services says that 10,000 of the 140,000 green cards allotted for skilled workers were not granted last year. It is unclear what the reason for the shortcoming is, though some experts have speculated it is due to a lack of resources at USCIS. An Immigration Voice spokesperson estimates that up to 200,000 unused green cards have piled up over the past decade.

Looking for Solutions

The question in the wake of the protests is what kind of compromise can be reached. The Administration and Congress are likely to work out a solution that will allow workers who completed their paperwork by July 2 to take their place in line, and the deadline for paperwork may be extended into August. In addition, they are expected to address the systematic historical problems so that all 140,000 green cards are used each year going forward.

More controversial is whether Congress and the Administration will try to allow the issuance of green cards from previous years that went unused. One congressional staffer says the possibility has been discussed. Such an agreement could result in a scenario where the number of foreign workers gaining green cards over the next year would be more double the average.

But that idea may face long odds. AILA's Kuck says that current law prohibits green cards from one year to be used in other years. And he thinks there is no appetite in either Congress or the White House for writing new pro-immigration legislation, after the comprehensive immigration reform proposal went down in flames earlier this summer. "I don't think they'd touch the issue with a 10-foot pole," says Kuck. "This issue has become radioactive."

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com

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