US PREZ LOOKS TO REBUILD, EXPAND LEGAL IMMIGRATION

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden plans to rebuild and expand legal immigration by cutting processing time, costs and security hoops, clearing backlogs, and fixing the H-1B visa programme that allows US companies to hire foreign employees, which have been overwhelmingly from India, the New York Times has reported, citing a blueprint.

This effort will run parallel to the White House-backed ambitious immigration reform legislation before the US congress, and the blueprint, titled “DHS Plan to Restore Trust in Our Legal Immigration System” — DHS is the Department of homeland Security, which oversees immigration, is only at a draft stage and will go through several versions before finalisation.

Biden ran for the White House on the promise of “building a fair and humane immigration system” and undoing some of President Donald Trump’s “cruel” policies reflected in his obsession of a wall along the border with Mexico. Since taking office, Biden has undone some of his predecessor’s policies such as the Muslim immigration curbs.The central element, as the New York Times reported, of the new plan is to address backlogs in the immigration system, which had been building over the years and were only exacerbated by President Trump’ restrictive policies.

It wasn’t clear from the report what specific backlogs will be targeted but the one that impacts applicants from India the most is the one for Green Cards. The US granted one million Green Cards in 2019, and that has been the general turnover annually. But because of a per-country limit of 7%, the queue of Indian applicants has kept growing over the year, with one conservative-leaning think tank estimating it to be more than 150 years.