Immigration Voice Announces Disappointment in Senator Durbin’s Blockade of

the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019

San Jose, CA, October 18, 2019 --(PR.com)-- Immigration Voice, a national non-profit organization with
over 130,000 members that advocates for the alleviation of restrictions on employment, travel, and
working conditions faced by legal high-skilled immigrants in the United States working as doctors,
researchers, scientists, and engineers at many of America's Fortune 500 companies, expresses its
profound disappointment in Senator Durbin's decision to block the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants
Act of 2019 from passage on the floor of the Senate.

On July 10, 2019, the bill passed the House by a 365-65 margin. This bill was the first bipartisan
immigration bill that passed either the House or the Senate this year. The Fairness for High Skilled
Immigrants Act creates a fair and equitable, “first come, first serve” system for receiving
employment-based green cards, putting an end to the discriminatory quota system that has left over 1
million Indian high-skilled immigrants in the United States with a decades-long line while individuals
from other countries get preferential treatment and face no wait time to receive a green card.

Senator Mike Lee, the lead sponsor of the bill (S.386) in the Senate attempted to pass this bipartisan bill
(which is also led by Senator Kamala Harris) by unanimous consent and was surprisingly and
disapprovingly blocked from doing so by Senator Dick Durbin. Senator Durbin, who co-sponsored this
bill in the 112th Congress, is now insisting that Republicans must agree to add an additional five (5)
million green cards over the next five years in order to support ending discrimination in our legal
immigration system.

Aman Kapoor, the Co-Founder and President of Immigration Voice stated that: “Immigration Voice is
incredibly disappointed in Senator Durbin's decision to block to be the only Senator against treating all
human beings equally when it comes to wait time for employment based green cards. Senator Durbin
knows full well that he is blocking a bill that was written by Democrats and whose sole purpose is to end
national origin-based discrimination. But, unfortunately, because he has had a long history of attacking
immigrants from India, including at a recent town hall he engineered and choreographed for this purpose,
has introduced a poison pill bill/amendment that he knows full well cannot pass. No member of our group
asked to be born in India. But because of the misfortune of the longitude and latitude of our birthplace,
we will die waiting in the green card line while people born 10 miles away can get a green card
immediately. We ask Senator Durbin today to tell us what country he thinks is acceptable for us to say we
were born in, and to tell us how we can change our place of birth so that we can be viewed as human
beings with equal rights in his eyes.”

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Contact Information:
Immigration Voice
Vikram Desai
202-386-6250
Contact via Email
www.immigrationvoice.org

Online Version of Press Release:

You can read the online version of this press release at: https://www.pr.com/press-release/797381

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