Immigration Voice To Organize A Peaceful Rally Of Legal, Skilled Foreign Professionals In Washington D.C.

Immigration Voice (http://www.immigrationvoice.org), a grass-roots advocacy group of highly skilled legal immigrants is organizing a rally of skilled workers in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 to draw the attention of US lawmakers and the American public toward the excessive delays and backlogs in the Employment Based Immigration system.

Thousands of skilled, legal professionals, such as Doctors, Engineers, Scientists, MBAs and other professionals from all over the country are expected to participate in this unprecedented rally in the nation's capital. With this rally, they hope to impress upon the Congress the urgency and the necessity for reform in the Employment Based Immigration System.
Rally Schedule

9 AM: Registration begins at the North East Quadrant of the Washington Monument for rally participants.

11:30 AM: Rally starts for Capitol Building through Constitution Ave

1:00 PM: Rally reaches the Capitol Building. Addressed by the US lawmakers
The Need For Reform

Nearly half a million highly skilled foreign workers are stuck in the backlog for Employment Based permanent residency (Green Cards). Today, this system takes anywhere between 6 and 12 years to grant the Green Card. This delay in obtaining permanent residency is due to two reasons:

1.

Low numerical cap (only 140,000 out of a total of 1.2 million Green Cards awarded annually).
2.

Processing delays in adjudication of applications.

A Grassroots Effort

This rally, and the organization, Immigration Voice, is a grass-roots effort propelled by the hard work and enthusiasm of thousands of skilled immigrants who have come to the US from all over the world but now want to call this country their home.

One of them is Kannan Sundaramahalingam, an engineer who works in Alparetta, GA. Kannan says that he wants to join this rally because "for years we legal immigrants were silent sufferers of this complex immigration process. Now there is a chance to make a difference and don't want to miss it".

Vivek Gupta, also a member of Immigration Voice is a professor of Radiology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. He wants to participate in the rally to ensure that “the voice of the highly-skilled and educated legal immigrants is heard and paid attention to”.
Will The US Lawmakers Act Before It Is Too Late?

The question here is if the US lawmakers and the immigration bureaucracy will pay attention to the demands of a fair treatment by the skilled, legal immigrants or will they wait until it is too late? According to a recently published study by researchers from Harvard, Duke and New York universities, if steps to alleviate the backlog of green cards are not taken soon , the US faces a very real prospect of "reverse brain-drain". This report can be found at http://www.globalizationresearch.com.


The current backlog and the lack of concern shown by the US Congress towards skilled, legal professionals is disheartening because these professionals played by the rules, entered this country legally, have used the most productive years of their lives in enriching this country and yet, the entire immigration process is hopelessly mired in inefficiencies, lack of transparency and mind-boggling delays.


With this rally, Immigration Voice would like to bring to the attention of the lawmakers that:

1.

The low numerical cap for the Employment Based Green Card category is inadequate to meet the requirements of American employers.
2.

The per-country limit for the Employment Based Immigration category is not reasonable. The employment based immigration is driven by petitions filed by employers that want to retain their employee based on skills, knowledge, education and talent: The country of birth has nothing to do with employability.
3.

The delays in obtaining a Green Card are resulting in disillusionment and anxiety to these future Americans; so much so that many have either already left or are considering leaving the United States.
4.

If a solution is not found soon, the resulting “reverse brain drain” will exacerbate the effects of overseas outsourcing on the American economy.

Media Contact

This rally is being organized by Immigration Voice, an advocacy group representing skilled, legal professionals from all countries in the US. For more information, please send an email to media@immigrationvoice.org or contact Immigration Voice’s media coordinator, Rupa Narayan, at 480-964-3011.
About Immigration Voice

Immigration Voice is a non-profit organization (501 (c) (4)) working to alleviate the problems faced by legal high-skilled foreign workers in the United States. For more information please visit: http://www.immigrationvoice.org.