Speech #1100050941

I was very dispirited. For example. what happens in the years 2008 to 2012 if this bill becomes law? Skillbased immigration will remain capped at the current level of 140.000 for the first 5 years until 2012. Even out of this 140.000. 10.000 will be carved out for temporary. lowskilled workers. I am not talking about temporary workers now but people on a track to citizenshipgreen card. permanent residence. and then citizenship. The 140.000 green cards we have set aside for that track. they have taken 10.000 of that for the temporary workers who come without a meritbased system. So there is a step taken in the bill to reduce chain migration. and it reduces it. it appeared. immediately and even back I think 2 years. But it says that if you were an applicant to come into our country for a permanent residence. as part of a chain migration application. you are considered to be a backlogged applicant. As a backlogged applicant. this bill says we are going to give you the opportunity to come and to get permanent residence in America. even though people who applied after a certain date would not get to have that provision applied to them. This will free up some numbers that will not be coming in on chain migration. but the theory was the green card numbers would be shifted to a skillbased. pointbased system like Canadas. That is how you get there. and this bill does attempt to do that. Unfortunately. it takes a lot of time to get there. Under this bill. they will take 8 years of those saved green card numbers and apply them to the backlog. There are about 3 million backlogged chain migration petitions. and each one amounts to about 2.2 persons because they could bring a wife or a child with them. sometimes 3 or 4 children. If you are in the backlog as a brother of a citizen and you have been in the backlog for several years. then you get to come with your familynot just yourself as a brother. but you get to bring your familyin the next 8 years. So we think it will total up to 6 to 8 million people who are in the backlog.