Liberals should ask themselves whether they’d prefer to live next door to low skill, welfare seeking illegal immigrants or degreed, bilingual, taxpaying high skill immigrants like the ones ‘Puter works with.

Imagine ‘Puter’s surprise when he found himself nodding in agreement with this morning’s New York Times editorial on America’s broken H-1B visa system. This is not to say ‘Puter agrees with all the editors’ prescriptions, but when ‘Puter and the NYT’s editors agree on anything, you can be metaphysically certain that collectively they are correct.

‘Puter’s business employs foreign born workers with degrees in finance, business and accounting to supplement its American born (or naturalized) workforce.  To a person, the immigrants with whom ‘Puter works are smart, hardworking and dedicated to remaining in this country.  In ‘Puter’s opinion, these immigrants add far more to our country than they currently receive in return.

The editors state that visaed immigrants “and their families often languish in a kind of immigration purgatory for a decade or more as they apply to become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens.” Sadly, the NYT gets it exactly right.

So our readers can understand the “immigration purgatory” in which ‘Puter’s employees exists (and which ‘Puter must decipher to make certain his employer is in compliance), consider the actual experience of one of his employees.

Employee X came to the United States to study finance on a student visa which the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) helpfully denominated an F-1 visa.  Ms. X spent four years on her F-1 visa and received a bachelor’s degree in finance from a strong state university.  After receiving her degree, Ms. X came to work for ‘Puter and had up to 12 months of F-1 visa permitted optional practical training (“OPT”).  Once her OPT period expired, Ms. X had to apply for and receive a specialty occupation visa, or the H-1B visa ‘Puter referenced earlier.  At this point, Ms. X had been legally in the United States for five years.

The United States issues up to 85,000 H-1B visas annually, starting April 1 for the following year.  This year (and the year ‘Puter’s employer applied for Ms. X), the 85,000 cap was hit the first week of submissions.  Think about that for a minute. America is knowingly turning away goodness knows how  many highly skilled workers every year. Genius.

Anyway, ‘Puter’s employer hired outside immigration counsel to manage the highly complex and time sensitive process of securing Ms. X’s H-1B visa. the process is a multi-step process that includes filing a Labor Condition Application (USCIS Form ETA-9035) to certify the job for which an H-1B visa is sought is an acceptable H-1B position. Once USCIS approves an applicant’s Labor Condition Application, that applicant can then complete and file a Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker (USCIS Form I-129). Once filed, Ms. X and ‘Puter’s employer waited to see if USCIS would grant H-1B status to Ms. X.  If USCIS had not, Ms. X would have had 30 days to wind up her affairs and leave the country.

Fortunately for all involved, Ms. X received H-1B status, meaning she was now work authorized for three years. At the expiration of three years, ‘Puter’s employer applied to USCIS for renewal of her visa status, filing the same forms and hiring the same outside immigration counsel. After Ms. X’s initial and renewal H-1B terms ran, she had now been in the United States for eleven years. H-1B status cannot be renewed more than once, so to keep Ms. X as a work authorized employee, ‘Puter’s employer now had to sponsor her for permanent residence.

As you may have surmised, there’s a USCIS form and process for that as well.  Welcome to Form I-140, the Petition for Immigrant Worker.  But that’s only part of the story.  Prior to filing for permanent residence status, ‘Puter’s employer had to post thirty days of job ads for this position based on Ms. X’s most recently approved Labor Condition Application to ensure no qualified Americans are available to fill the position. If and only if there were no qualified applicants could ‘Puter’s employer then file Form I-140 on Ms. X’s behalf, and then only after a 30 day statutory waiting period. Form I-140 had to be filed and accepted by USCIS before expiration of Ms. X’s current H-1B work authorization, or the Ms. X would have been required to leave the country.  Assuming USCIS decides not to audit Ms. X’s Form I-140, processing time is two to four months.

If Ms. X’s visa status had lapsed, she would have had to start again from scratch, meaning find a new employer willing to start the H-1B visa process on her behalf from day one, losing six years in the process.

Again, fortunately for all involved, Ms. X’s Form I-140 was timely filed and accepted by USCIS. But acceptance by USCIS simply means that Ms. X’s form sits in a stack with a bunch of other accepted Form I-140s divided into piles by applicant’s country of origin, in most cases for multiple years.  The advantage to Ms. X and to ‘Puter’s employer is that once USCIS accepts for filing an applicant’s Form I-140, the applicant can then renew automatically his H-1B status until such time as USCIS finally acts on Form I-140.

And now Ms. X has been in the United States for eleven years under a combination of student visas and work visas. How much longer must Ms. X wait before USCIS gets around to granting or denying her application for permanent residence?  Good question.

As noted, USCIS (thanks to Congress) grants permanent residence status on a floating and whimsical sometimes country by country quota system.  Once USCIS hits a country’s quota for the year, tough toenails.  You’re waiting another year. As of April 2013, for most H-1B workers, USCIS is processing permanent resident applications file on or before July 1, 2007. If you’re unfortunate enough to be a Form I-140 applicant from India, USCIS is all the way up to applications submitted on or before December 8, 2002.  Really. 

Ms. X is not from India (or China, Mexico or the Philippines), so assuming things go according to plan at USCIS, she’s got about an additional six year wait. At the end of those six years, USCIS can decide to deny her application, forcing Ms. X. to leave the country.

By the way, did ‘Puter mention Ms. X is currently seven months pregnant? Her newborn child will instantly receive United States citizenship, but Ms. X will still languish in immigration purgatory.

Did ‘Puter also fail to mention that Ms. X’s husband is currently in the United States under a spouse’s visa dependent on Ms. X maintaining her work authorization?  Better yet, did you know that foreign national spouses of H-1B work authorized immigrants are forbidden to work in the United States even though they are legally present? Ms. X’s husband also has an undergraduate finance degree from an American university.  But he can’t work. 

Let’s assume Ms. X’s Form I-140 is approved by USCIS.  Ms. X then must file Form I-485 Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status in order to finally receive her green card.

Now Ms. X has lived in the United States continuously for seventeen years, never causing anyone trouble, at least in any amount sufficient to cause the United States to kick her out. Finally she will have received her permanent resident status. Don’t even ask about citizenship, because that takes more USCIS forms and three more years. At least for Ms. X’s sake, once she receives her permanent resident status, she is free to leave her job with ‘Puter’s employer if she’d like.

Did ‘Puter not mention that H-1B employees are tied to their employer?  That is, Ms. X is not really the H-1B applicant or holder. ‘Puter’s employer is.  Until such time as she becomes a permanent resident, Ms. X is an indentured servant.  A well treated and well compensated indentured servant, but an indentured servant nonetheless. Unless, of course, Ms. X would like to return to her native land with nothing really to show for the last seventeen years of her life.

Congress calls our immigration system a “sensible structure for managing the inflow of high skilled workers balanced against national security.” American employers caught in this Rube Goldberg contraption refer to it as “stupidity.”

‘Puter and the NYT’s editors agree.  The immigration process is broken for highly skilled foreign nationals.  Seventeen years to permanent residence status and twenty years to citizenship is insane.  If the United States is to remain competitive on the global stage, we’re going to have to poach top talent from all over the world.  Or we could continue with our current system of screwing over highly skilled immigrants until they tire of us, deciding instead to go to friendlier shores like Canada which just recently overhauled its H-1B equivalent in workers’ favor.

It’s now in Congress’ hands. ‘Puter’s betting they blow this one as badly as they’ve blown everything else of late, damning the United States to continued and one day inexorable decline.

*The H-1B visa is actually for the class of immigrant USCIS refers to as “Nonimmigrant in a Specialty Occupation.”  ‘Puter notes with frustrated bemusement USCIS has a separate H-1B subclassifications for “Singapore and Chile Nationals in a Specialty Occupation” (H-1B1), “Department of  Defense Worker” (H-1B2) and believe it or not, “Fashion Model” (H-1B3). ‘Puter guesses being a carbon based life form too stupid to dress itself while functioning as an animatronic mannequin is a skilled profession.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.