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发帖数: 30 | 1 http://watsonimmigration.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/unused-visa-t
Unused Visas: To Recapture or Not to Recapture- That Is The Question
Published August 20, 2014
Tags: executive action, immigration reform, recapturing unused visas,
reducing visa backlog, unused visa, visa backlog
The Politico Newspaper broke a story earlier this week (which has since been
repeated by many other news outlets including the Wall Street Journal)
that Obama met with various business officials to discuss employment-based
immigration issues that can be addressed with executive action. One of
those issues was apparently to recapture unused visas.
That issue caught my eye as it has been on my research to-do list for a
while. The news reports prompted me to research the law as to whether the
president has the authority to recapture such unused visas. My opinion is
that the law already allows for it.
Here is what the Immigration Nationality Act says at § 206 (8 USC 1156):
If an immigrant having an immigrant visa is denied admission to the United
States and removed, or does not apply for admission before the expiration of
the validity of his visa, or if an alien having an immigrant visa issued to
him as a preference immigrant is found not to be a preference immigrant, an
immigrant visa or a preference immigrant visa, as the case may be, may be
issued in lieu thereof to another qualified alien.
The law already allows the use of unused visa. So what is all the fuss about?
Each year 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas are issued. There is a
complicated formula to calculate visa distribution. The questions we should
ask are these: (1) In each fiscal year, do we have a record of how many
visas were denied or otherwise not used? (2) If so, do we know if they were
reused within that particular fiscal year? Perhaps the Department of State
can shed light on how many were unused from previous years. Here is a
report that lists number of visas issued.
From discerning all the complicated legal mumbo-jumbo from the statute, the
law basically says unused visas from the previous year will be added on to
the current year of visa availability. From what I can tell, unused visas
are generally being put back in the pool. While I cannot completely
understand the numbers in the above linked reports, I believe the
information should be available. Reports from the Wall Street Journal and
Politico discuss that 200,000 visas can be recaptured. I would very much
like to know how that number was determined (if anyone reading this article
knows, then please do let me know!).
If indeed there were unused visas in past fiscal years that need recapturing
, then do we even need a new law or executive order to recapture them? The
law above in black and white clearly says they can be reused.
Therefore, in my opinion, unused visas- from years past, can be reissued to
other qualifying immigrants. No executive order necessary. Just
understanding, implementation and execution.
I will continue my research and update this article in due course, if my
research leads to more worthwhile information. But in the meantime, your
question may be- why is this important?
The Backlog. The visa backlog is one of the biggest problems our broken
immigration system is encountering. You may often hear the phrase that
people will have to go to the back of the ‘line’ to get their visas. There
is no ‘line’ as such but the’ line’ refers to the waiting time to get a
visa. People are waiting for years, sometimes, decades to get visas. The
employment-based preference categories have severe backlogs, particularly
for China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. Recapturing the unused visas
will help reduce the backlog, help bring security and stability into peoples
’ lives, which in turn will help businesses hire the right people, focus on
growing their businesses and not worry about whether their employees will
stay or leave the US.
Will the President include this in his list of executive orders? Well, I don
’t think an executive order is necessary for the above reasons. But let’s
imagine I missed something in my research and it does need an executive
order. Will he include it in his list? Hard to say. If he is looking for
maximum impact, this is definitely one way to make a big difference.
Politically, he is already in a challenging situation by all accounts- the
GOP will take issue with whatever he does. So, why not go for maximum
impact and just go big? | N*****5
发帖数: 502 | 2 If no executive orders needed then OB of DOS is breaking the law. However so
far, no one ever challenge of OB about this. | s****a
发帖数: 397 | 3 no one has broken the law. the law simply has flaws. |
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