Immigration Voice Calls IDEA Act Of 2011 A Glimmer Of Hope For Legal High-Skilled Immigrants

Online, June 16, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Immigration Voice (IV) welcomes the Immigration Driving Entrepreneurship in America Act, or the IDEA Act of 2011, proposed by Representative Zoe Lofgren [D-CA]. We thank Rep.Lofgren for strongly addressing the problems faced by high skilled legal immigrants in this country. The bill includes significant provisions that will go a long way to improve the legal high-skilled immigration situation and at the same time, includes effective border enforcement provisions. Therefore, the IDEA Act of 2011 directly address the broken immigration system which currently has prohibitive application wait times ranging from 10-30 years for legal high-skilled immigrants from certain countries.

Rep. Lofgren has been a champion of legal immigrants and her proposed bill tackles the following much needed provisions, among other measures -

a) Amend the INA to eliminate the per country limits for employment based immigrant.

b) Recapture employment based immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delays.

c) Authorize immigrants who have earned a master's degree or higher in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) from a US university to be admitted for permanent residence without being subject to cap.

These provisions are in line with the President Obama's state of the union address, which called for the need to retain the best and brightest in the country as opposed to training them in America's top universities and then sending them off to foreign countries to compete against American technology and innovation.

Backlogged immigrants from India, China, Mexico and other countries have been weary of the lack of movement when it comes to addressing the problems in the legal high-skilled immigration system. Many of these problems have risen due to outdated laws that do not make sense in the employment based green card system and have been exacerbated by bureaucratic delays in the past years.

Aman Kapoor, Founder and President of Immigration Voice believes, "The road to clearing the backlogs is still far, however, this bill provides an important first step. Our community hopes that the legislators in both chambers of the congress get to vote on the dreams of these future Americans. By tackling the very issues, this bill has given them a glimmer of hope."

Rep. Lofgren has previously introduced similar bills in 2008.

Immigration Voice is a non-profit, national grassroots organization promoting awareness and providing solutions to fix the problems faced by high skilled legal immigrants in the employment based immigration system. Learn more at www.immigrationvoice.org