INDIANS RALLY TO END GREEN CARD BACKLOG ACROSS USA

WASHINGTON: Hundreds of Indian professionals held peaceful rallies across the US, demanding an end to the long and massive green card backlog by eliminating arbitrary percountry limit regulations.

Indian-americans, most of whom are highly skilled and come to the US mainly on H-1B work visas are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a seven per cent per-country quota on allotment of green cards or permanent legal residency.

As a result, the current wait period for Indian skilled immigrants for green card can be as long as 70 years. The rallies, to urge lawmakers to support to end the per-country limit on legal permanent residency was held over the weekend in Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon.

"As awareness builds on this topic among the American public and lawmakers, they are joining the chorus asking for reform to address the discriminatory green card backlogs impacting employment based green card applicants from India," said Seattle-based Gcreforms, a recently created organisation by Indian-americans for this purpose.

"The attendees spoke in one voice and the message was clear it is unfair to discriminate against applicants from one country due to arbitrary percountry limit regulations. These limits were put in place when Lyndon Johnson was president of America and before even the first handheld calculator was invented they do not work in this era," a media release said.

Gcreforms expects to continue raising awareness in several other states in the coming weeks, and has been steadily gaining support from politicians, chieftains of business and the American public.

In the House of Representatives, remove per-country limits has been the best biggest biPartisan support in the current congress via Kevin Yoder's bill HR 392.

Three in Four congress members supports this issue, yet the bill has not been brought to vote, Gcreforms rued.

"It is high time Congress, Senate and White House addresses the green card backlog impacting 300,000 highskilled immigrants who have made significant contributions to the US economy," GCREforms said.

Many Americans joined 'Break the Backlog Series' at Arkansas by Gcreforms, 'Green Card Backlog Round Table' discussions in Bentonville, Arkansas to know more about the employment based green card wait times. Centerton Mayor Bill Edwards addresses the gathering and acknowledged the contributions of the Indian immigrant community.