I rise yet again today to speak about an issue near and dear to my heart and an issue that has become the focus of many of my passions here in the Senate, and that is the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. This is an important and overwhelmingly bipartisan piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that passed the House in July by an overwhelming vote of 365 to 65. Two of these things should strike the American people as remarkable: No. 1, that something with that much of a bipartisan margin passed in the House of Representatives, and No. 2, that it deals with immigration, and it was still that overwhelmingly bipartisan. As I explained in this Chamber before, the concept of this legislation is simple. Our current method for allocating green cards caps the total number of green cards that nationals of any one country may receive. In practice, this results in severe de facto discrimination on the basis of country of origin. Immigrants from countries with large populations are restricted to receiving the same number of visas as immigrants from smaller countries. Their wait times have ballooned, in some cases stretching out literally for decades. The problem compounds over time, and it has become even more unfair than it was many decades ago when it was first enacted into law. I repeat, this happens for absolutely no reason other than the country in which the immigrant was born.…
Share
More from Bill Lee
It is important to reflect on the importance of this position and on the importance of the Department that he has been asked by the President of the United States to lead. This is a Department that, 25 years ago, didn't exist. It was…
It is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness.
These scurrilous and false arguments that have been made against this bill--now, although some of these arguments have been mingled with truth, they are almost entirely false. They are built on lies. They are built on a blatant…
It is important to me. I think it is important to the American people, who overwhelmingly support this measure and the policy changes it would bring about when enacted into law, that we keep our running tally of the arguments being raised…





