Kendra Horn on Immigration

Border wall is a medieval solution to a 21st Century problem

Kendra Horn: America is a nation built by immigrants and many of us can trace our roots to see how our own family history is a part of the fabric of our Democracy.

There should be a realistic and legal path to citizenship for anyone brought here as a child who has not committed any crimes and is contributing to society.

It is important that we secure our borders. But we shouldn't break up families or turn away fully vetted refugees from countries in crisis.

Congress should enact reform that keeps us safe but upholds the ideal of the American dream. A wall alone is simply not the answer to curbing illegal immigration. The wall is a medieval solution to a 21st Century problem. Using technology, intelligence and properly funding our border patrol, we can enforce immigration laws in a much more effective manner.

Don't deport DREAMers; make DACA permanent

Increase both high-skill and family-based visa caps.

Legislative Summary:This bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15%, and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China. The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country.

Explanation from the Countable.US: Under the current immigration system, immigrants from any one country can claim no more than 7% of the 140,000 employment-based green cards issued annually to foreign nationals working in the U.S. This significantly disadvantages immigrants from larger countries that more immigrants come from.

For example, China (population 1.3 billion) and India have large backlogs of workers wishing to immigrate to and work in the U.S., but they have the name visa caps as countries such as Iceland or Estonia (population 1.3 million), which have both much smaller populations and far fewer citizens seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

The net effect of this is that immigrants from India and China can face decades-long waits, averaging 2-3 times the wait times for immigrants from other countries, for green cards, and many have to return home because they can't get permanent residency; meanwhile, countries such as Iceland and Estonia never come close to reaching their visa limit caps.

Legislative outcome Roll call 437 in House on 7/10/2019 passed 365-65-2; referred to Committee in Senate 7/9/2019; no action as of 1/1/2020.