RELIEF Act of 2019

The Resolving Extended Limbo for Immigrant Employees and Families (RELIEF) Act of 2019 () is a proposed immigration reform bill introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) in the United States Senate on October 16, 2019. The bill seeks to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to end the immigrant visa backlog.
Introduction
The Immigration Act of 1990 established five occupational categories (in the Immigration and Nationalities Act of 1965 only two existed). It provided 140,000 immigrant visas (green cards) annually for employment-based immigration and mandated that foreign nationals of no country shall receive more than 7% of the available visas in each category in any given year, with the exception of excess unused visas. However, this is not the case for the H-1B visa system. As such, Indian nationals that for years have received the majority of H-1B visas, despite receiving about 20% of the annual Employment-based green cards have to wait decades before receiving one. A similar situation holds for immigrants applying for family-based green cards where millions of people, mostly from the Philippines, Mexico, India, and China, have to wait years before receiving a green card. The fundamental cause of the green card backlog is that annual demand for green cards is much higher than ones available annually and not, as some may assume, the per-country caps. It is estimated that currently there are 4.7 million people waiting in the green card backlog, 3.9 million of whom are waiting for a family-based green card and the rest waiting for an employment-based green card.
Provisions
The bill would, after a five-year transition period, remove the per-country caps for employment-based green cards and increase the per-country caps for family-sponsored green cards from 7% to 15%, while increasing the number of total available green cards. Specifically, this bill would do the following.
* Over a five-year transition period, it would phase out the per-country numerical limits on employment-based green cards and increase the per-country limits on family-sponsored green cards from 7% to 15%.
* It would create a pool of new green cards almost equal to the entire number of people in the employment- and family-based backlogs, and would distribute those in a course of five years.
* It would uncap the family-sponsored second preference F-2A category for new spouses and minor children of existing legal permanent residents in the United States, which has a cap of about 88,000 and backlog of about 150,000.
* It would increases the number of green cards for the family-sponsored first preference category from 23,400 to 111,334, essentially reassigning the 88,000 from the F-2A category.
* It would exempt derivatives (spouses and minor children) of primary applicants from numerical limits.
* It would protect “aging out” children who qualify for legal permanent resident status based on a parent’s immigration petition.
Viewpoint of Third Parties
The bill has received the backing of several organizations, including American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA); immigration advocacy groups such as Support Alliance of US Immigrants, United We Dream, United Chinese Americans; and professional organizations such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS). They note that, unlike other legislation such as the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, this bill is a win-win since it both makes the immigration system more fair by eliminating or raising the per-country caps, and eliminates the backlog by increasing the number of available green cards.

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