House Passes Bill Lifting Per-Country Visa Quotas

By Andrea Salazar

By a 389-15 vote, the House passed legislation Tuesday night removing per-country quotas on employment-based visas for high-skilled immigrants.

As it stands now, any given foreign nation has access to no more than 7 percent of the visas the United States issues. Supporters say this bill would help manufacturers by removing that cap and making visas available to high-skilled immigrants around the world.

The bill now goes to the Senate where Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who chairs an immigration subcommittee within the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised the passage of the bill as “a harbinger for progress on other immigration issues.”

“This will remove outdated constraints that prevent us from attracting the kind of innovators who can create job growth in America,” Schumer said. “We will move the bill as quickly as possible in the Senate, where we expect it to find overwhelming support.”