A controversial immigration bill that has already been approved in the Senate is now in the hands of the House of Representatives and, if ratified, could affect Hispanic workers who want to work legally in the United States.
That is why immigration attorney
Carlos Colombo
explained to Un Nuevo Día why this bill could close the doors to Hispanic immigrants who obtain residences to work in the country for at least the next 10 years.
"It is an issue that can affect millions and millions of applicants. Let us understand that it is not only for professionals, anyone who wants to obtain a residence for employment in any country will be affected by this," he said.
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The expert explained that this so-called Equity Law for Immigrants by Employment has an annual limit on the number of residences that each country can have.
Therefore, a country cannot have more than 7% of all residences that are reserved annually for applicants by job or by family.
"What this law says is that there are certain countries, like India and China, that have a lot of workers in the United States. So, due to the annual limits on the quotas of residences, these people have to wait many years, 10, 20, 30 or 50 to receive a residence for employment, "he detailed.
He added: "So, the purpose of this law is to cancel that part of the law that says that each country can not more than 7% of all those residences, the argument is that it does not have to discriminate based on nationality."
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Although the technology community in the United States received this news positively, the lawyer clarified what would be the main points of this project that would affect Hispanic workers who seek to work legally in the country.
"The problem is that the solution to this issue is not to eliminate only discrimination based on nationality. What we need are more permanent residence quotas because obviously there is much more demand than the quotas that exist in the law today," he explained.
"If we just do this and it depends on the type of proposal that eventually the House of Representatives adopts, this could affect the rest of the world. So, citizens of India or China are going to have to enter the quotas now and that is going to affect to the rest of the world, "he stressed.
For example, a Latin American, European or Asian employee, from a country other than India or China, may have to wait five, 10 or 20 years to obtain a residency.
That is not the solution, what they need is to increase the number of residences, said the lawyer.
In other words, by removing that 7% limit, that could increase the number of people coming from China and India and then the quotas for Hispanics go down.
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If this bill becomes law, Combo revealed what the impact would be especially for companies that hire foreign talent to work in the United States.
"The problem is that any company that wants to hire someone is going to have to wait at least a couple of years, maybe five, ten years. Obviously that is not going to work, no company is going to wait that long to hire an employee," he warned .
"This is not the solution. No one is going to win in this. I understand that for the citizens of India or China it is unfair that they have to wait so long, but this is not the solution," he admitted.
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Everything you need to know about changes and migration processes after COVID-19
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