I wanted to quickly share
this video from yesterday (11/05/2015) from the DHS Ombudsman event in Washington, D.C.
This video represents the collective anguish of the skilled immigrants stuck in green card backlog who have very few rights and are victims of a corrupt system protected by a syndicate of employers, immigration lawyers and government officials. This syndicate functions as a mafia whose purpose is to ensure the status quo so the system continues to bring in immigrant workers with fewer rights into US and ensures that those workers continue to have fewer rights so companies can have more control over immigrant workers to displace Americans.
The system feeds off of the fact that skilled immigrants have little or no job mobility. The way the real system works, immigrants with fewer rights are more attractive to the employers over equivalent American workers, resulting in the displacement of American workers. This is the underlying reason for instances of Americans losing jobs to temporary visa holders in companies like Disney, Southern California Edison and hundreds of others across the country. So the system ensures that immigrants are exploited and Americans are discriminated against. This is not an exception, this is the norm and this is how the real system works.
DHS Ombudsman's Annual report shows a graph for L1B RFE rate. Immigration Voice wants to know, why the Ombudsman/DHS/USCIS has never EVER published any report showing number of Americans displaced by H1 & L1 visa programs - Americans who lost their jobs because their replacement had fewer rights, or, immigrants who were exploited by employers.
I just sat through a day's worth of nonsensical commentary about how to bring in more Immigrants into the country and to ensure that they have fewer rights.
It got to a point that I was feeling suffocated sitting in that room to see the company representatives and government bureaucrats on the panel and immigration lawyers in the audience dictating what rights they will decide to give immigrant employees, and everyone sitting around them nodding in agreement. The rights to live free don't come from some immigration lawyer, HR Department or any bureaucrat. These rights come from our creator, including the right to live free (read that as right to change employer at free will). That is the core value of our society. But somehow handful of these touts throughout the event talked as if they decide which right and when they will grant that right to immigrants. And throughout the event, they would not even care to mention "displacement of Americans", "rights of immigrants", "exploitation of immigrants", "discrimination against Americans in the job market" etc. All they were interested to discuss was - how to get immigrants with fewer rights from outside so that would be fresh meat for companies and immigration lawyers to prey on.
There was not a peep about the rights of immigrant workers. No one asked obvious questions about the many elephants in the room. Why DHS/Ombudsman Annual event has only immigration lawyers or company representatives as the only "stakeholders". Why common immigrants or Americans are not considered "stakeholders"? Are common people not allowed to participate in public debate? And when I tried to speak up that throughout the event, no one in the room brought up "displacement of American worker", "exploitation and abuses of immigrants" or that "immigrants have fewer rights", DHS officials tried to shut me down even though they would let some immigration lawyer break the rule set by moderator and ask 3-4 questions.
The upcoming AC21 rule will give some ability for immigrants with approved immigrant petition to change jobs. But we see that immigration lawyers and companies are trying to kill or water down this fix. What are the authorities going to do to help the One Million plus people stuck in Green Card backlogs - people with fewer rights - hanging in there - in great emotional and financial stress - costing American jobs? What has USCIS been doing for the last 10 plus years while this human tragedy has been unfolding? Don't they read the letters we send them? Why are Immigration Lawyers asking questions designed to get USCIS/DHS to say that an Immigration Petition does not belong to the Immigrant? Why is the AC21 rule taking so long?
After sitting through a day of immigration lawyers, employers and the government pat each other on the back for their success in exploiting the system - these were my thoughts and questions to the Panel and the Audience.
In coming days, we expect AC21 rule to get published. We will need your help to step up and comment on the rule so we could bring light to the possible flaws in the proposed rule. We will be in touch soon.
Thank you
Aman Kapoor
