Sep
20
Over 1000 legal immigrants staged a protest on Tuesday (18SEP07) at the Capitol to raise awareness on the long waiting times immigrants must currently endure to receive their Green Cards.
The immigrants (who were dressed in t-shirts with American flags on them and carrying placards) included doctors, medical technicians and computer engineers from India and China.
Traveling from as afar as Washington State and California, the immigrants called on Congress to provide more permanent visas for highly educated immigrants as well as more resources for an immigration system that is so overburdened, the wait for a Green Card can be a decade.
According to immigration policy advocates, the rally was a highly unusual event - legal immigrants are traditionally very cautious as their future rests entirely in the hands of the federal government.
Chinese computer scientist Paul Wang says, “When I heard about this rally I immediately made the decision to come. I like the freedom and the safety in this country. I want to send a request signal to Congress to bring more efficiency to the process for us to get a green card.”
American Families United consultant Paul Donnelly says, “It is a significant thing to have foreign-born people, who are notoriously hard to organize, organizing themselves."
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