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Take Action: Urge Congress to Include Fair Immigration Reforms through the Budget Reconciliation

On August 24, the House passed the budget resolution clearing a big legislative hurdle to move forward with budget reconciliation which includes legalization and other immigration reforms.  The August 24 House vote follows the Senate’s action passing a budget resolution that instructs the Senate Judiciary Committee to find a pathway to citizenship for those who are undocumented.

 

The fight for reform is gaining momentum! In the meantime, we need to keep the pressure on the Senate and the House to not only deliver a pathway to citizenship, but include other needed immigration reforms via budget reconciliation.

 

TAKE ACTION TODAY: Urge Congress to also include fair immigration reforms for legal immigrants via budget reconciliation. Email your legislators today!

 

Below you will find a template for a letter (email) you can personalize and send.

 

 

 

 

 

For Sending a Letter by Email to Your House Representative:

 

 

 

You can find the name and website of your Representative by going to https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative. You can then click on your Representative’s website and find the button for Contact -> Email Me. When addressing your email, you can use the following format:

 

 

 

*************************************************************

 

 

 

Dear Representative (last name):

 

My name is __________, and I am writing this letter to urge you to include reforms for legal immigrants in any upcoming budget reconciliation measure.

 

I am a _____job title_____ and have been living and working in the United States pursuant to a temporary work visa since ____date____. My family has been able to move to the United States and live with me as my dependent(s) by maintaining ____H-4/L-2____ visa status. I have correctly followed all required steps to apply for a green card and have waited _____years for an immigrant visa to be available based on my category and country of birth. 

 

I want to contribute to this country. My work in the field of ___________helps _______[describe the importance of your work to the US economy or society] _______. I have done my best to comply with all the immigration rules of this country. I have been through ____ # of H-1B (or F-1, OPT, L-1, H-4, etc) ______ visa renewals over the years. I have been photographed and fingerprinted. It has cost thousands of dollars in government filing fees for me to maintain my status. Every time I have traveled to my home country, I have gone through a visa interview at a U.S. Consulate. The Department of Labor has already confirmed that my presence in the United States does not harm U.S. workers. 

 

As your constituent, I urge you to use budget reconciliation to help those individuals who have been waiting in line for years, if not decades, for a green card, but cannot complete the process because a visa number is not immediately available to them. 

 

Despite the significant demand for immigrant visas, due to administrative delays, nearly 300K immigrant visas have gone lost from 1992-2020, and more than 100K will go lost. Congress must act to recapture these already authorized visas that have gone lost due to bureaucratic delay and take bold action to help these individuals who are living and working lawfully in the U.S. on their path to citizenship.

 

In addition, congressional leaders must establish a path to green cards for people raised and educated in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ work visas — but who find themselves without status of their own upon turning 21.

 

These “documented Dreamers” are forced to switch to student visas if they are in college, and then hope to find an employer to sponsor them for limited work visas. If they can’t, many have to leave their families and “self-deport” to a country they may not even remember. They are also not covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides deportation protection and work permits only to those without legal immigration status.

 

Congress should also include provisions to eliminate the discriminatory per-country cap as proposed in the bipartisan Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Allocating green cards by country of birth is a relic of the past that never made any sense, and it makes even less sense in the modern business world. 

Lastly, our current employment-based immigrant visa backlogs are the result of annual limits that were set prior to the invention of the internet. The world has drastically changed since then, yet our immigration laws have not and are clearly outdated. Congress should modernize the system by stopping the counting of family members towards the annual limits on employment-based immigrant visas and increasing the annual limit from the current number of 140,000.

 

I urge you to take bold and decisive action during the reconciliation process to reform our immigration system – by providing pathways to citizenship for those who may become undocumented if the immigrant visa system is not ameliorated. 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

____Name_______

 

 

 

 

For Sending a Letter by Email to Your Senator:

 

 

 

You can find the name and address of your Senator by going to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. You can then click on your Senator’s website and find the button for Contact -> Email Me. When addressing your email, you can use the following format:

 

 

 

**********************************************************************

 

 

 

Dear Senator (last name):

 

My name is __________, and I am writing this letter to urge you to include reforms for legal immigrants in any upcoming budget reconciliation measure.

 

I am a _____job title_____ and have been living and working in the United States pursuant to a temporary work visa since ____date____. My family has been able to move to the United States and live with me as my dependent(s) by maintaining ____H-4/L-2____ visa status. I have correctly followed all required steps to apply for a green card and have waited _____years for an immigrant visa to be available based on my category and country of birth. 

 

I want to contribute to this country. My work in the field of ___________helps _______[describe the importance of your work to the US economy or society] _______. I have done my best to comply with all the immigration rules of this country. I have been through ____ # of H-1B (or F-1, OPT, L-1, H-4, etc) ______ visa renewals over the years. I have been photographed and fingerprinted. It has cost thousands of dollars in government filing fees for me to maintain my status. Every time I have traveled to my home country, I have gone through a visa interview at a U.S. Consulate. The Department of Labor has already confirmed that my presence in the United States does not harm U.S. workers. 

 

As your constituent, I urge you to use budget reconciliation to help those individuals who have been waiting in line for years, if not decades, for a green card, but cannot complete the process because a visa number is not immediately available to them. 

 

Despite the significant demand for immigrant visas, due to administrative delays, nearly 300K immigrant visas have gone lost from 1992-2020, and more than 100K will go lost. Congress must act to recapture these already authorized visas that have gone lost due to bureaucratic delay and take bold action to help these individuals who are living and working lawfully in the U.S. on their path to citizenship.

 

In addition, congressional leaders must establish a path to green cards for people raised and educated in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ work visas — but who find themselves without status of their own upon turning 21.

 

These “documented Dreamers” are forced to switch to student visas if they are in college, and then hope to find an employer to sponsor them for limited work visas. If they can’t, many have to leave their families and “self-deport” to a country they may not even remember. They are also not covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides deportation protection and work permits only to those without legal immigration status.

 

Congress should also include provisions to eliminate the discriminatory per-country cap as proposed in the bipartisan Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Allocating green cards by country of birth is a relic of the past that never made any sense, and it makes even less sense in the modern business world. 

Lastly, our current employment-based immigrant visa backlogs are the result of annual limits that were set prior to the invention of the internet. The world has drastically changed since then, yet our immigration laws have not and are clearly outdated. Congress should modernize the system by stopping the counting of family members towards the annual limits on employment-based immigrant visas and increasing the annual limit from the current number of 140,000.

 

I urge you to take bold and decisive action during the reconciliation process to reform our immigration system – by providing pathways to citizenship for those who may become undocumented if the immigrant visa system is not ameliorated. 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

____Name_______