Business immigration visa quotas have long presented a major hurdle for employers and employees. There is no logic to the quota systems that Congress has in place, and quotas are not accurately connected with economic reality.

The current systems exist in both the employment-based immigrant visa categories that lead to permanent residence and in the non-immigrant work visa categories.

It is important for the US economy that Congress takes the necessary steps to update the employment-based visa system and reform the quota issue. Without these changes, employers will continue to struggle to fill jobs in many industries, such as nursing, and other highly skilled positions.

Employment-Based Visas

The employment-based, or IV, quota system is complex, with priority dates and places in a queue per immigrant visa category and country. There are approximately 140,000 IVs available in five preference categories.

Under the per-country cap established in 1990, no country can receive more than 7% of the total number of employment-based preference IVs each year. There have been many attempts to eliminate the per-country quotas as they severely impact a small number of countries, like India, and cause multi-year processing backlogs.

Given the lack of congressional...

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