Biden may remove cap on Green Card

DISTRESSED that professionals from India on H-1B visas have to wait for decades to get their Green Card, Indian-origin lawmakers have expressed hope that a Biden administration would come to their rescue by removing the country cap on the legal permanent residency.

One of the original co-sponsors of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, Democratic congressman from Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi said on Saturday that removing per country cap from employment-based Green Cards would remove the Green Card backlog for Indian IT professionals, who are being brought here often to fill the shortages in the IT industry.

‘I'm hopeful that under a Joe Biden administration, we're finally going to be able to get this legislation through the Senate, and then signed into law and of course, as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package as a whole,' Krishnamoorthi said during a virtual panel discussion with other three Indian-origin lawmakers - Dr Ami Bera, Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna at the day-long IMPACT Summit.

The discussion was moderated by former US Ambassador to India Rich Verma.

Congresswoman Jayapal, who is vice chairman of the House Immigration subcommittee, said that they have been working on a number of immigration related issues including making sure that the spouses of H-1B workers are able to work in the US.

It includes addressing undocumented workers, a number of whom are Indians. Referring to a recent report, she said that 6.5 per cent of Indian-Americans are living below poverty lines.

Probably for the first time, the four Indian-origin lawmakers, popular as Samosa Caucus, were having a virtual panel where congressman Khanna said that he really believes that the Indian-American community can ‘be decisive' in swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The focus of the community, he said, is to work for Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, whose victory would be historic as this would bring Indian-American Kamala Harris as the vice president.

‘This is really a great moment for the community,' Khanna said.

In his remarks, Bera, the senior-most Indian-origin Congressman, said that the US-India relationship and the QUAD relationship are very important in the Asia-Pacific region.

Expressing serious concerns over the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bera said that the US needs to return to the global stage of working with likeminded allies.