The United States Senate passed a bill that removes the numerical limitation by country for work-based immigrant visas
Washington:
The United States Senate unanimously passed a bill that removes the numerical limitation by country for employment-based immigrant visas and raises it for family-based visas, legislation that will greatly benefit hundreds of thousands of Indian professionals in America who have been waiting years for their green cards.
The passage of the Highly Skilled Immigrant Equity Act by the Senate on Wednesday is a huge relief for Indian IT professionals coming to the US on H-1B work visas and their current waiting period for the card. green or permanent residence is running out. decades.
Originally passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 10, 2019 by a bipartisan from 365 to 65 votes, the legislation increases the per-country limit on family-based immigrant visas from seven percent of the total number of Visas available that year at 15 percent. He was sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah in the Senate.
The legislation removes the seven percent cap on employment-based immigrant visas, a provision that will facilitate the elimination of the huge backlog of Indian IT professionals in the U.S. It also eliminates compensation that reduced the number of visas for people from China. Due to arbitrary country limits, the legal status of IT professionals in India was constantly in jeopardy.
In fiscal year 2019, Indian citizens received 9,008 Category 1 (EB1), 2,908 Category 2 (EB2) and 5,083 Category 3 (EB3) green cards. EB1-3 are different categories of employment-based green cards.
In July, Senator Lee had told the Senate that the delay for an Indian citizen to obtain permanent residence or green card is more than 195 years.
The new legislation also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022, by setting aside a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional skills), EB-3 (skilled workers and others) and EB-5 (investor) visas for persons other than from the two countries with the highest number of recipients of such visas.
Of the unreserved visas, no more than 85 percent will be allocated to immigrants from a single country. Against the clock, the Senate on Wednesday moved the process very quickly. It was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous consent and shortly thereafter was considered by the full Senate. The Senate quickly approved it with unanimous consent.
Currently, there is a backlog of nearly one million foreign nationals and accompanying family members legally residing in the US and who have been approved and are awaiting employment-based green cards. Most of them are from India.
The Highly Skilled Immigrants Equity Act creates a more merit-based system that levels the playing field for highly skilled immigrants, said Senator Kevin Cranmer, who worked to ensure that the legislation includes safeguards against fraud and abuse. in the visa system.
The Senate passed the bill while Senator Cramer was chairing the chamber. Immigration is often a contentious issue, but we must not delay progress where there is bipartisan consensus, “he said.
In February 2019, Cramer brought Debjyoti Dwivedy (“DD”), an alumnus of North Dakota State University and vice president of Immigration Voice, a group that advocates for this bill, as a guest to the State of the Union.
As Congress debates the many aspects of our broken immigration system, Debjyoti offers insights and experiences that reflect North Dakota’s priorities and values, Senator Cramer said at the time. I hope we can finally pass a version of the Highly Skilled Immigrant Equity Act in this Congress.
It was a great honor to have been invited as your guest to the State of the Union. For me, this shows your appreciation for the important role immigrants play in North Dakota. His ardent support for the Immigrant Equity Act is found in both its conservative principles and commitment to the people of North Dakota, DD wrote after the event.
In August, Senator Lee in the Senate said that he has always been struck by the fact that the government has conditioned green cards and a path to citizenship based solely on the applicant’s country of origin.
In fact, there may have been some legitimate reason for this many decades ago, but this has led to a system that heavily discriminates against applicants for a country’s green card, he told his Senate colleagues.
I mean literally a country. This is incompatible with our founding principles. This is not how we try to do things as Americans, and it is not right. Today, if you are an immigrant from India for work entering the EB green card application process, you will wait almost 200 years before your application is considered solely by your place of birth, he said.
Almost 200 years on the waiting list. Some people don’t even live that long. Our country isn’t much older than that, and that’s the amount of time they would have to wait based solely on the country they were born in, Lee had said, urging his colleagues to lift the country limit on Green. Card applicants.
If you were born in any other place, anywhere other than China; say in Ghana, Sweden, Indonesia, basically any other country other than India, your request will be considered immediately. This type of discrimination is simply incompatible with the principles of a merit-based immigration system and with our founding principles and the principles that unite us as Americans, he had said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed)
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