Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Colorado for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, fixing our broken immigration system has been a top priority of mine while I have been in Congress. Today, we in the House have an opportunity to address one small piece of our broken system, but a very important one.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Fairness for High- Skilled Immigrants Act. This bipartisan legislation takes an important step toward ensuring the United States can continue to recruit and maintain the highest caliber of educated professionals in the world.

Mr. Speaker, as you have heard, under current law, the quota of employment-based immigrants for a country like Iceland with a population of 338,000 people is the same as the quota for India, which has a population of more than 1.3 billion people.

Eliminating arbitrary per-country caps and addressing the employment- based green card backlog from highly populated countries will allow high-skilled professionals, many of whom are already living and working in the United States on a temporary visa, to continue contributing more fully to our local communities and economies.

It will also provide certainty to the employers and communities that rely upon these highly skilled workers.

Mr. Speaker, in my district, many of these high-skilled professionals are world-class medical scientists, including oncologists and cardiologists. I have heard from and met with many of these professionals, just like Mr. Buck from Colorado has, throughout my State in central Washington.

Dr. Obulareddy and her husband, Dr. Chithiri, came to the United States in 2006 to study medicine. Dr. Obulareddy is now a specialist in oncology serving my constituents in Yakima and surrounding communities. She states, ``We always wanted to give something back to this great country, and hence, we decided to move to rural America, which is experiencing an acute shortage of physicians for a long time now. This shortage is more severe for specialist physicians like me.''

She and her husband, and many like them, also dream of opening businesses to create more American jobs, but their temporary status does not allow them to do so.

Dr. Obulareddy and Dr. Chithiri are from India and have been told the backlogged wait time for them to obtain their green cards is--now, get this, Mr. Speaker--between 70 and 150 years. This demonstrates just how seriously flawed the current program is and why we need this legislative fix.

We should continue to recruit and retain these highly educated, highly trained individuals in order to meet the demands of our local communities and economies.

The need for rural healthcare specialists is a problem across my district and across rural America, which is why I am grateful for these professionals who are helping address these problems facing our local communities.

Mr. Speaker, as I continue to work toward addressing other components of our broken immigration system, I am proud that this bill takes a step in the right direction, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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