Two Recent Immigration Events in the Headlines

H.R. 3012, The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, has been approved by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate on 30 November. HR 3012 would raise the per-country visa limitation from 7 percent to 15 percent of the total number of family-sponsored visas. The bill would also eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants.
The bill would not affect the existing caps on the total number of family-sponsored and employment-based visas that can be issued in each year and would not significantly affect the number of immigrants entering the United States.
Who will benefit from HR 3012? Those likely to benefit are the high-skilled immigrants who have been waiting a long time to become eligible for a visa. This would mainly apply to people from India.
 
In the Family Preference categories, immigrant visa applicants from India, Mexico and the Philippines might see their waiting time reduced.
 
How will Vietnamese immigrant visa cases be affected? Not at all. The per-country limit for visas is 14,185 per year. HR 3012 would double that. However, Vietnam rarely has more than applicants than the present limit of 14,185. So even if 28,000 visas are available for Vietnam, only around 10,000-12,000 would be used during a year.
The House of Representatives approved HR 3012 for the following reasons: America needs these High-skilled Immigrants as much as they need us. We need the tax dollars to pay for our retirement, social security, Medicare and Medicaid. The majority of these immigrants are from fast growing major economies such as China and India. If America does not welcome them, they can do just as well in their own countries. When that happens, America loses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another recent headline was this: “Family of sick New Jersey girl fights visa denial”. The headline immediately gives the impression that the State Department is cruel and unfeeling because they denied the visa application. However, when we look at the facts, we can see how unfair it is to blame the State Department.
The facts are: A five year old girl in New Jersey is suffering from leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant from her seven year old sister who lives in El Salvador. Family members in El Salvador helped the sister apply for a tourist visa. It was denied two times, with good reason. As most people in the Vietnamese community know, Consular officers usually deny a tourist visa application when a visa applicant has several family members living in the U.S., on the presumption the visitor will not return to the home country. In this case, the family in El Salvador should have applied for a humanitarian parole visa. After a lot of mis-leading news headlines, someone in Washington finally understood this. U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey said that he had personally sent the family's application for a "humanitarian parole" visa to the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The humanitarian visa would allow the sister to travel to New Jersey strictly for the bone marrow transplant. Note that the proper destination for the Humanitarian Visa application is US CIS, not the local US Embassy.
 
Who is at fault for the delay and misunderstanding in this case? The blame can only be placed on the relatives in El Salvador because they did not seek help from an experienced immigration practitioner. They should have been told from the beginning that a tourist visa application was sure to be denied and they should have started by filing a Humanitarian Visa application.
 
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Q.1. How does someone request humanitarian parole?

A.1 You file a request for humanitarian parole using Form I-131, Application for Travel Document, with the Form I-134, Affidavit of Support, and sending these to the CIS address provided on the form. These forms are available to download from http://www.uscis.gov/forms.
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Q.2. How long does will it take to get an answer from CIS for a Humanitarian Parole application?

A.2. USCIS generally will make a decision on a request for humanitarian parole within 90-120 business days from the time USCIS receives the application. Urgent cases may be processed within days when necessary
 
ROBERT MULLINS INTERNATIONAL www.rmiodp.com
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