S.386 and H.R.1044: Proposals to “Eliminate Per-Country Caps” in the 116th Congress

01

Official Record: Neither Became Law

S.386 (Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019) has only two actions listed on Congress.gov: introduction and referral to the Senate Judiciary Committee on 2019-02-07, with no subsequent progress.

H.R.1044 passed the House under suspension of the rules on 2019-07-10; on 2020-12-02, the Senate discharged the committee from further consideration and passed the bill with an amendment by voice vote; the final action was notification to the House of the Senate’s action on 2020-12-03. The two chambers did not complete passage of the same text before the 116th Congress ended, and the record does not show enactment as a public law.

02

Review of the Community’s 2020 Projections (Historical Discussion)

Community documents at the time offered multiple sets of projections under “passage” and “non-passage” scenarios. For example, under non-passage, “EB-1/2/3 would advance by half a year of priority dates per calendar year,” versus “one year of priority dates” under passage; for China EB-1, a timetable for when various priority dates would become “current” was calculated based on “approximately 17,500 in total demand and approximately 2,800 in annual supply”; and, following passage, EB-2/3 allocations would “increase by 95% for the first three years, be zero for the following four years, and increase by 400% starting in year eight,” among other projections.

These figures came from polls within community groups, law firm marketing statistics, and individual calculations, not official data. The proposals did not become law, which means only that the premise of the “passage scenario” did not materialize. The “non-passage scenario” projections likewise depended on the community’s assumptions at the time about demand and supply. This site has not backtested each projection against the actual official Visa Bulletin series, so it cannot assert that they came true or failed, much less present them as current projections. This site no longer displays the specific timetables.

03

What Law Still Applies

Because the proposals did not become law, employment-based immigration remains subject to the 7% per-country cap under 8 U.S.C. 1152 and the quarterly unused-number rule in subsection (a)(5). Any new proposal should be evaluated based on the official action record on Congress.gov: only enactment as a public law through signature (or taking effect under constitutional procedures) changes the allocation rules.

04

Advocacy Views on “Whom to Align With”

The community previously discussed which group Chinese applicants should join forces with to advocate for reform, calculating country shares using assumptions such as “accounting for 80% of the total allocation.” These are political advocacy views, and their assumptions have not been officially substantiated. This site does not evaluate them and merely records their existence. The law firm approval statistics and media charts cited by the community are likewise not official sources.