Health workers set to get 40k US green cards

WASHINGTON: A bipartisan group of US senators have introduced a legislation to grant 40,000 unused green cards to foreign nurses and physicians to fight Covid-19.

The bill proposes to grant 25,000 green cards to nurses and the rest 15,000 to physicians, which include both those hired abroad or those already in the US.

The US grants around 1 million green cards a year, subject to a per-country limit of 7%. The queue of applicants from India for employment-based green cards is already very long, with waiting periods of more than 100 years at the current rate of disposal of cases, and it could not be ascertained if Indian medial professionals will be able to circumvent this queue.

“One-sixth of our health care workforce is foreign-born. Immigrant nurses and doctors play a vital role in our health care system, and their contributions are now more crucial than ever. Where would we be in this pandemic without them?” said Democrat senator Richard Durbin.

The Trump administration had suspended all immigrant visas for 60 days. HTC