Immigration Quota Reform: Waste Not, Want Not

"[I]mmigrant visa quota numbers evaporate without a trace rather than linger in the environment.  Every September 30, all unused immigrant visas for that fiscal year disappear.  Moreover, unless Congress intervenes, nothing can be done to recapture a green card lost because immigration bureaucrats gave it to the wrong person or otherwise failed to make it available in time to a deserving would-be immigrant. ... The solution is not just for Congress to recapture lost green cards, as it did twice before in 2000 and 2005 when passing the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act and the REAL ID Act, [but also, as] part of comprehensive immigration reform, Congress should enact a law providing that unused quota-limited immigrant and nonimmigrant visas in any fiscal year should automatically roll over for use in later years.  The law should also grant courts the power to craft equitable remedies for persons like the plaintiffs in Li v. Kerry, short-changed by erroneous actions or omissions of immigration bureaucrats, without taking away vested visa benefits already conferred on others.  This new law ought to be a no-brainer.  It grants not a single extra visa beyond the quota set by Congress.  Rather, it reaffirms that we are not just a nation of immigrants but a frugal people as well." - Angelo A. Paparelli, Mar. 24, 2013.