Dr. Deepan Chatterjee
Nov 7 · 5 min read

Why I support the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act ( S 386) and the Senate should too

The United States Senate is currently debating whether to pass a bill known as S 386 or the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, whose companion bill, HR 1044, passed by a whopping bipartisan margin of 365-65 with 85% of the House of Representatives voting for it in July of this year. This is almost akin to testing the favorability of apple pie in the U.S. Congress.

What this bill does is it evens the playing field for high-skilled immigrants from highly populated countries such as India and China, in the arena of allocation of immigrant visas (also known as green cards). The U. S. government currently allocates 140,000 of these visas every year for businesses who employ foreign citizens. Of these, no country can receive more than 7% of the total no. of green cards in a year. This puts the citizens of populous countries such as India at a tremendous disadvantage because there are a lot more applicants from India vying for these green cards than say a country such as Latvia or Iran, with much smaller populations and lesser no. of green card applicants. What this arbitrary system of green card allocation has done is that it has created a huge backlog for Indian citizens whose green cards have already been approved, but who are waiting for the U.S, government to grant them these cards. This means decades of frustration, pain and anxiety for these hapless immigrants. Current estimates indicate that more than 500,000 Indian citizens and their families are waiting for their green cards in this artificially created backlog. Below, I will give examples of two such immigrants who exemplify this outrageous policy. Their names have been changed to protect their confidentiality.

Suresh

Suresh is a psychiatrist who works in a community mental health clinic in rural Pennsylvania. He has dual board certifications in Psychiatry and Neurology and has completed fellowships in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine from reputed hospital centers in the United States. He has been practicing medicine in the United States since 2004. His employer applied for his green card in July 2009 and his petition was approved in a short amount of time. Since that time, however, he has been unable to leave his current job and move closer to the city where there are better schools for his son, who is a U.S. citizen.

Suresh wants to open his own psychiatric practice but has been unable to do so due to his visa restrictions. He does not qualify for any promotions because if his employer does promote him, they will have to file for another application with the U.S. government, and he may lose his current place in the line. Two years ago, Suresh’s dad in India was very sick and had to be hospitalized. Suresh could not go back to see him because another friend of his, Ramesh, who had gone back to visit his aging parents in India, was refused a visa to come back to the United States, even though he already had an approved employment petition with his current employer. Every month, Suresh eagerly looks at the Visa Bulletin published by the Department of State to see if his priority date (date when his green card application was first registered with the Department of Labor) is current, which means that he can now apply to receive his green card from the U.S. government officially.

All of this is taking a personal toll on Suresh who says he might move to Canada (which has a much less restrictive immigration system) soon because of his more than a decade wait to receive his green card. Suresh is among only two psychiatrists within a 100-mile radius of his town. If he moves, the community mental health clinic will be left with only one psychiatrist, and his patients will have to wait a year or longer to see a psychiatrist and get their psych meds refilled. There is already an acute shortage of mental health professionals in rural parts of the country. This will only be exacerbated by Suresh’s

departure.

Snebashish

Snebashish holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from a reputed U.S. university. He is currently employed as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at a top 10 engineering school in the country. He has numerous publications and patents to his credit. In 2011, his university applied for an immigrant visa for him, which was approved. He is still waiting to receive his green card because of the arcane immigration system described above. Current projections show that he might have to wait an additional 10 years or more to get his green card. This will mean more than half his career wasted before he finally achieved permanent residency in this country.

Snehashish’s grandmother died in India last year, and he could not go back to see her for fear of his visa petition being denied by the U.S. Consulate, even though he has an approved visa in the U.S. Snehashish must renew this H1B visa every three years, and these extensions are becoming harder to obtain under the current administration.

Snehashish has a ten-year-old daughter who was born in India. She is currently on a dependent H4 visa. In another eight years, she will age out of this status and will have to self-deport back to India, a country that she hardly knows anything about. If Snehashish were to unfortunately pass away, as has bene the case with some recent immigrants awaiting their green cards, both his wife and daughter would be deported back to India. This is just plain crazy

There are tens of thousands of other stories such as these – men, women and children primarily from India caught up in the decades long backlog. President Trump has talked about making America’s immigration system more merit-based. S386 is a merit-based system of allocating green cards to skilled professionals on a first-come first-served basis. The U.S. Senate needs to pass this bill in a unanimous fashion because it is the just thing to do. This is what American has always been known for – justice for everyone regardless of age, gender, national origin or ethnic background. What is happening currently is no less than country-based discrimination in the allocation of green cards. It needs to end!

    Dr. Deepan Chatterjee

    Written by

    Psych Doc. Writer. Speaker. Humanist. Tweets @DrDeepChat007