Green card backlog leaves lives in limbo
Thousands in U.S. legally wait decades for applications to be processed
Lemuel Dsouza no longer sees the point of staying in the U.S.
If he stayed here on an H-1B visa, waiting for a green card, he would be stuck in the same job for years, stagnant in his career. But back home in India, he’ll be free to create his own company, apply for any job he wants and take full advantage of the country’s burgeoning tech sector. So in a search of better opportunities, he’s moving Lemuel Dsouza is moving out of his home in Santa Clara. He no longer sees the point of waiting to earn a green card. back home this month.
The irony doesn’t escape him.
“It wasn’t worth the risk,” he said on a recent evening, shortly after quitting his job at a Bay Area tech company.
Dsouza didn’t want to become a statistic: one of tens of thousands of people who have lived legally in the U.S. for decades, but still don’t have a green card. But this week, hundreds of foreigners who don’t want to leave their lives here are
meeting lawmakers in Washington to bring more attention to the green card backlog, an oft-overlooked issue in the wider immigration debate.
Their message: If something isn’t done about this soon, they, too, will have no choice but to pack up and leave the U.S.
The green card backlog is not new, but it has worsened over the years as more foreigners come into the U.S. and the number of green cards — those pliable pieces of plastic that show permanent residency — remains the same. About 140,000 employment-based green cards become available every year and, regardless of population, no country can generally receive more than 9,800 a year in the same category.
For Estonian programmers or Chilean designers, that’s not a problem. But every year, tens of thousands of Chinese and Indian nationals on workbased visas overwhelm the number of slots available.
There are a number of bills attempting to fix the backlog by increasing or removing the per-country cap, including one proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, last month. Another bill, by Rep. Kevin Yoder, RKan., has about 300 co-sponsors, many from California’s congressional delegation.
Those waiting in the backlog get less attention than, say, young people eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, which gives certain protections to youth who entered the U.S. illegally.
But experts see the long wait as undergirding many problems in today’s work-based immigration system. If workers could move more smoothly into permanent residency, they say, there wouldn’t be a need for the kind of temporary fixes rolled out over the years: Spouses wouldn’t need special permission to work while in line for a green card. Employees could move from job to job without fear. And foreigners wouldn’t have to go through annual bureaucratic exercises just to stay in the country.
“It’s one of those issues where the average person knows very little or nothing about it,” Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, said. But for “the people who are directly affected — it’s like their whole life. It affects everything.”
The Chronicle spoke to a dozen people stuck in the backlog, H-1B visa holders as well as their spouses and kids. Many said they felt stuck in their jobs — afraid that if they leave, they’ll have to go to the back of the green card line. Spouses, who come to the U.S. on an H-4 visa, dreaded losing the right to work, only recently granted to some, under the Trump administration. And the children of H-1B holders faced a ticking clock: If they don’t get a green card by the time they’re 21, they age out of their parents’ protection.
The workers also spoke of the daunting reality that if their H-1B visas didn’t get renewed, they would suddenly need to leave the U.S., taking young kids back to countries they hardly know. Some have been here for 10, 15, 20 years, with no green card in sight. According to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy, at the current rate, Indians with just a bachelor’s degree might have to wait anywhere from 25 to 70 years.
As the Trump administration ramps up scrutiny of H-1B visas, it has said it would review extensions as if they were new applications. That means the wait to qualify for a green card is accompanied by newfound uncertainty. “It’s like a constant sword hanging over your neck,” one H-1B holder said.
People from China could have to wait between four and five years, according to the study, while those from other countries with smaller populations would hardly need to wait at all.
“This is why there is exploitation associated with H-1B workers, because they are stuck in the backlog for 70 years, and they are stuck with the same employers,” said Aman Kapoor, president of Immigration Voice, who is leading one coalition of foreigners to Washington this week.
But critics say alleviating the backlog isn’t the answer to fixing the immigration system — and would instead make matters worse by favoring people from India and China.
John Miano, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration laws, said just focusing on the backlog is “treating the symptoms rather than the disease.” The root of the problem, he said, is that the H-1B visa program is “dualintent,” meaning that people who technically come on guest worker visas can apply for permanent residency.
“We’ve set unrealistic expectations,” he said. “They need to tell people and set the rule, that if you come here on a guest worker visa, then you don’t get your green card.”
On a recent afternoon, Dsouza packed up his remaining belongings into a last few boxes. Leaving isn’t too hard after five years in the U.S., he said, because he is still young, at the beginning of his career. He doesn’t have a family yet.
It’s different for Sudarshan Bhat, who said he’s built too much of a life here over the past 11 years to just leave it behind.
Inside his comfortable home in San Jose, questions around immigration dominate conversations with his wife, Preethi Rao: What will happen if his H-1B extension gets denied? Should they have bought a house? What would they do about the cats? The garden? Their friends?
Bhat thought he would be done worrying about these questions by now. After all, he said, he’s paid all his taxes and remained in good standing with work. Yet when he looks at the updated green card dates every month, it hardly ever seems to budge.
“Our cats are more of citizens than we are,” his wife joked, as she tousled one of them. “I keep saying ‘Can you sponsor us?’ ”
Bhat is also going to Washington this week, with another advocacy group, Skilled Immigrants in America. This will be his second trip in five months.
“I’m doing what I can,” he said. “We’ve spent a good chunk of my career here, why would I want to just restart everything?”
As an engineer educated at a top Indian university, Bhat could go to many other countries and restart his career. Unlike Dsouza, he still sees the value of staying in the U.S.
But ultimately, he has the same question: How much longer can he wait?