Indians may benefit from Green Card bills introduced in the US

We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that high-skilled immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the US

Kamala Harris, US Senator and Dem presidential aspirant

washington — Two identical legislations backed by top companies from the Silicon Valley like Google have been introduced in the US House of Representatives and Senate to end the per-country limit on green cards and could benefit thousands of Indian professionals waiting to gain permanent legal residency if signed into law.

In the Senate, Republican Mike Lee and Democratic presidential aspirant Kamala Harris introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Wednesday, a bill that would remove per-country cap for employment-based green cards.

An identical bill was tabled in the US House of Representatives by Congressman Zoe Lofgren and Ken Buck, Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, with co-sponsorship of a bipartisan group of 112 Congressmen.

If passed by Congress and signed into law, the legislations would benefit thousands of Indian professionals on H-1B visas whose current wait time for permanent legal residency is more than a decade.

The H-1B visa, most sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

Having a Green Card allows a person to live and work permanently in the US. According to some recent studies, some categories of those Indian professionals face a wait of 151 years under the current system which imposes a country cap on people who get green cards.

The US makes currently 140,000 green cards available every year to employment-based immigrants, including many who first come here on temporary H-1B or L visas. The existing law, however, provides that not more than seven per cent of these green cards can go to nationals of any one country — even though some countries are more populous than others. Because of this seven per cent limit, for exam-

ple, a Chinese or Indian post-graduate may have to wait half a decade or more for a Green Card, much longer than a student from a lesspopulated country. “Ours is a nation of immigrants, and our strength has always come from our diversity and our unity,” Harris said. “We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that highskilled

immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the US and continue to contribute to the economy,” said the IndianAmerican Senator.

Co-sponsored by 13 more Senators, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act increases the percountry caps for family-sponsored green cards from seven per cent to 15 per cent. —