Of that a mere 250 words are devoted to skilled immigration - 97% of his Immigration policy platform is focused on helping illegal immigrants and legal family based immigrants get to the US faster and in greater numbers.
Of the mere 250 words he devotes to skills based immigration, the great majority show that he buys into the suspicion and hostility of Stephen Miller to the H1-B program. Here are a few examples:
"High skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivize recruiting workers already in the U.S. for in-demand occupations."
"An immigration system that crowds out high-skilled workers in favor of only entry level wages and skills threatens American innovation and competitiveness."
" Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages."
He does say in one sentence only that he supports "eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs". It is clumsily worded but I believe it refers to GC country quotas.
He also supports increasing the number of GCs awarded from employment sponsorship from 140K and exempting STEM PhD grads from US universities from the cap.
Trump has said the same about Green Cards for STEM PhDs so that is hardly anything differentiated. The only point on which Biden can be said to offer anything different is his one sentence saying that he supports increasing employment based GCs from current levels.
However Indian Americans should take note of the difference in tone in how he discusses illegal immigrants and family based immigrants vs skilled immigrants. The former category are discussed with empathy, passion and kindness.
Skilled immigrants are discussed in ambiguous terms and with suspicion. Even though H1-B workers are highly paid and have to go through a detailed wage certification process, he treats them as disincentivizing hiring of American workers.
This is despite the fact that H1-B skilled workers are a drop in the bucket with respect to immigration flows relative to the groups he anoints with virtue (illegal immigrants and family based immigrants).
The majority of the 250 words on skilled based immigration are focused on making these visas harder to get and claiming they undermine wages for American workers.
For Indian Americans stuck in H1-B visa renewals and employment sponsored GC wait times who believe that Biden will be much better for them, I would encourage you to take a closer look at his stated policies.
Now while I am not a fan of the H1-B program in general, the kinds of workers it brings in are highly compensated and H1-B is literally the only skills based immigration pathway we have in America. I prefer a RAISE Act like system where employers are taken out of the system ...
But for right now under the system we have this is the only program that provides a pathway to a Green Card for skilled immigrants. To attack this program as Biden does shows you what he thinks about skilled immigrants.
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