EAGLE Act Died Deserved Death in Lame Duck

Given the numerous landmines that faced immigration restrictionists during the always perilous, fraught-with-amnesty lame duck session, the results turned out pretty well. As usual, several proposals that would have harmed Americans, and specifically U.S. workers, lurked around every corner. But in the end, despite the treacherous bill’s many supporters and their most vigorous efforts, amnesty went nowhere.

In what may have been the most satisfying victory for those determined to protect American workers from the continuing job displacement threat that foreign-born nationals pose, the Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act, better known as the EAGLE Act, was so profoundly flawed that U.S. House leadership pulled the bill before it could come to the floor for a vote.

Although not amnesty per se, the EAGLE Act would have phased out, over a nine-year period, the 7 percent per country cap quota for employment-based green cards. In short, aliens with visa petitions that have been approved for two years, but are still waiting in line, could instantly apply for a green card; country caps would no longer be part of the permanent residency equation.

Moreover, those with approved green card petitions who have been waiting for a minimum of two years, but with no green card available because of their priority date not being current, would have the ability to file for adjustment of immigration status and receive employment authorization documents under the proposed legislation. This would cement permanency. The EAGLE Act would have spawned a significant increase in Indian and Chinese tech workers and rewarded them with a citizenship path.

The purpose of the caps, and the reason they should remain in place, is to prevent the large immigrant-sending countries such as Mexico, India and China from monopolizing the supply of visas. In practice, the cap preserves the ability of companies who are not major users of guestworker programs to obtain green cards or immigrant visas for skilled individuals from abroad or directly from U.S. universities. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services insider told the Center for Immigration Studies that if the per-country cap were lifted, then for the next 10 years, nearly all of the green cards in the ordinary professional worker category would go to Indian nationals.

To the point of the EAGLE Act limiting diversity, as outlined above, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) expressed concern that the legislation would not only harm prospective black U.S. tech workers, but also hamper foreign nationals from Africa and the Caribbean. In addition to the CBC’s concerns, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced opposition to the bill. AILA is an open-borders, pro-amnesty group that rarely opposes legislation that would expand legal immigration. For the CBC and AILA to oppose the EAGLE Act means it’s deeply flawed. Finally, the tech industry is plagued with mass layoffs. If the EAGLE Act became law, U.S. tech workers would have had an ever-steeper uphill climb to get white-collar, well-paid jobs.

The EAGLE Act’s defeat, attributable largely to the expanded provisions vis-à-vis a similar 2019 bill, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, represented a bitter pill for the legislation’s major sponsor, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Silicon Valley’s deep-pocketed titans like Amazon, Microsoft and Intel, all enthusiast backers of the bill who consistently lobby Congress for more H-1B employment visas. Lofgren launched a desperate last-minute effort to revive the EAGLE Act.
In her letter to Nancy Pelosi she expressed “great disappointment” to the House Speaker that the bill had been pulled. Lofgren illogically insisted that the EAGLE Act was “a small and important step forward.” Perhaps, but for international, not U.S., workers.

As the 117th Congress ended, amnesty and unjustifiable green card rewards have been averted. In the process, however, congressional immigration expansionists and their allies have been further exposed as a truly anti-American force that will persist and present an omnipresent risk to U.S. workers.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts.