H.R. 3012 - Estimation of EB category Cut-Off Date movement if it becomes a law

The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, H.R. 3012, was introduced by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) on September 22, 2011 and was approved by judiciary committee for consideration in the house. This bill still has long way to go but as few readers requested us to analyze the impact of this law on current cut-off date movements for EB category, we are providing some rough estimation in this article.

Summary of the Bill

The bill aims to eliminate per-country visa limits, which are currently causing severe backlogs in green card. As of right now, the Immigration and Nationality Act allows for only 140,000 employment-based visas to be allocated each year.  At present, the percentage of visas that can be allocated to any one country is capped  at  7% percent of all of the employment-based visas available.

Under the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, the per-country limit on employment-based visas would be eliminated by 2015 after a 3 year phase-in period (FY 2012, FY 2013 and FY 2014).  During the 3 year transition, the vast majority of Employment Based visas would be allocated on first-in-first out basis in order to eliminate the current backlogs.

As pointed by one of our reader, an amendment presented by Rep Lofgren to this bill was approved by the committee. As per the amendment, final rules as followed will  beapplied to EB2 and EB3 category only. No change in rule is expected for EB1, EB4 and EB5.

In FY 2012, backlogged pending cases irrespective of country with earlier priority date would receive unreserved visas - 85% of the visa allocation within a category with respect to . In FY 2013 and FY 2014  they would receive 90% of the visa allocations within a category. There is a limit of 25% for reserved visas and 85 % for unreserved visas that could be made available for a single country under this bill. Reserved visas will be only available until FY 2014 (and in general will be used by ROW-M-P based on current backlog). After FY 2014, all visas (there will be no reserved or unreserved visas) within a category will be used strictly for backlog reduction solely based on first-in-first out (FIFO) regardless of country of birth. Please note that there is no change in spillover rules, unused visas will be allocated regardless of country  strictly based on priority date from one category to other category during later quarter in a fiscal year.

Regardless of these updates estimation do not change, as at no point any country for first three phase in period will use more than 85% of the limit.

Estimation of cut-off dates movement each year if HR 3012 becomes a law

We have summarized the estimation of cut-off date movements for EB category if HR 3012 will become a law effective 30 September 2011. In general, EB2 category will be backlogged for 3-4 years whereas EB3 category will be backlogged for 8-9 years. During estimation of such cut-off dates, it was assumed that EB2 category will not receive more than 15000 spillovers or unused visa. 15000 seems like far optimized estimation after considering that with this new bill, EB2 backlogged countries would receive spillover from EB1, EB4 and EB5 (not EB2-ROW as allocation are very less). With time and current backlog, we expect EB5 at best would yield 5000 and EB1 only 10,000.

It is also assumed that EB2 category will not be current for quite some time as  EB2-ROW will be backlogged until 2015 and new EB2-IC demand will always be replenishing inventory. That said, EB3 will not receive any spillover anytime soon. This is an assumption and reality may be different. EB1 category is always assumed current for sake of simplicity in calculations.

 

Generally Reserved  will be used by ROW-M-P; Unreserved will be used by I-C for initial years