Kim Schrier on Immigration

Bipartisan immigration reform, oppose border wall

• I will join with my Washington state colleagues in pursuing comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship on a bipartisan basis.
• I will immediately push to codify DACA and the DREAM Act as the law of the land.
• I will seek to overturn Donald Trump's travel ban which was clearly crafted to deny entry to our country based on religion.
• I will oppose any expenditure of your tax dollars to fulfill a political promise to build an unnecessary wall on our southern border.

Restore DACA and DAPA; then comprehensive reform

Kim Schrier: I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship. No one's child should live with the constant anxiety of being torn away from the only life she or he has ever known, and no one should be discriminated in the workplace or harassed in the streets because of where they were born. I also support federal legislation to restore DACA and DAPA. Immigrants are critical contributors to the economy in my district, and I am absolutely ready to join my Washington state colleagues in championing immigration reform that includes a reasonable path to citizenship. I will also push to expand and improve worker visas that agricultural and technology-based economies all across our district depend upon. I firmly oppose using any tax dollars to build an expensive and unnecessary wall along our southern border.

Increase both high-skill and family-based visa caps.

Legislative Summary:This bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15%, and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China. The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country.

Explanation from the Countable.US: Under the current immigration system, immigrants from any one country can claim no more than 7% of the 140,000 employment-based green cards issued annually to foreign nationals working in the U.S. This significantly disadvantages immigrants from larger countries that more immigrants come from.

For example, China (population 1.3 billion) and India have large backlogs of workers wishing to immigrate to and work in the U.S., but they have the name visa caps as countries such as Iceland or Estonia (population 1.3 million), which have both much smaller populations and far fewer citizens seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

The net effect of this is that immigrants from India and China can face decades-long waits, averaging 2-3 times the wait times for immigrants from other countries, for green cards, and many have to return home because they can't get permanent residency; meanwhile, countries such as Iceland and Estonia never come close to reaching their visa limit caps.

Legislative outcome Roll call 437 in House on 7/10/2019 passed 365-65-2; referred to Committee in Senate 7/9/2019; no action as of 1/1/2020.