US lawmakers seek to lift caps on green cards

WASHINGTON: A pair of Democratic and Republican US lawmakers on Wednesday re-introduced a bill in the US House that proposes to remove a per-country limit on employment-based green cards, which has created a massive backlog of applicants, specially from India.

The Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act 2021 (EAGLE Act) proposes the phasing out of a per-country limit of 7% on the roughly 1 million employment-based green cards issued annually, and raising the cap on family-based green cards from 7-15% of a total of about half a million.

The bill, which was introduced by Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Republican John Curtis, is similar to one cleared by the House in July 2020 with huge bipartisan support. The US Senate passed a similar bill with some amendments with unanimous consent in December.

In another development, US President Joe Biden has tasked vice-president Kamala Harris to lead the efforts on protecting voting rights as Republican lawmakers seek to bring in voting restrictions.

Also, Biden has announced that the US was halting oil development activity in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a move by ex-president Donald Trump to allow drilling.