I agree with Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The United States needs to have a merit-based system of awarding green cards to foreign citizens. For too long, highly qualified immigrants (especially from China and India) with doctoral degrees have had to wait for a decade or more because of outdated numerical restrictions on the number of green cards awarded each year by the US government. This antediluvian system needlessly punishes physicians, researchers, engineers and other high-skilled immigrants while people with lower skills are thrown into the same bucket and given preference over their more skilled peers. There is also a needless emphasis on family-based green cards, which are awarded to nearly four times the number of employment-based candidates. This emphasis needs to be reversed, as rightly pointed out by President Trump.
I work in the healthcare field, where more than half of the total number of physicians and nurses hail from a foreign land. Almost a quarter of the licensed physicians currently practicing in the United States are from India. The category under which most foreign-born physicians apply for a green card (EB-2) has a wait time of more than a decade for applicants from India. This is ridiculous. Who should the physician be worried about – the patient or her security in the United States? Why should a physician be treated unfairly at the expense of a lower-skilled immigrant and his family members? Shouldn’t we be rewarding folks based on their educational achievement and skills? It seems to me that our priorities as a country are twisted and morally wrong here.
The United States needs a merit-based immigration system NOW. Let us award immigrants with green cards based on education, high wages, English-speaking ability, etc. Let us stop chain migration of entire immigrant families to the United States and put a curb on the current system of blanket amnesty for all family members, regardless of their background. Let us be wise in allocating green cards only to the ones who are most deserving of them. I urge the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass the RAISE act, as proposed by Senators Perdue and Cotton. The President has already indicated that he stands ready to sign this legislation were it to come to his desk. Let us champion this nation’s stance as a nation of serious, law-abiding immigrants. Let us make brand American more competitive again!!!!
For a complete text of the RAISE Act as introduced in the Senate, please go to https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/354.