WASHINGTON: Eliminating the country quota from the most sought-after Green Cards will end the current discrimination in the US labour market, but would allow countries like India and China to dominate the path to American citizenship, according to the latest Congressional report.
Having a Green Card allows a person to live and work permanently in the United States.
Indian-Americans, most of whom are highly skilled and come to the US mainly on the H-1B work visas, are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a seven per cent per country quota on allotment of Green Cards or the Legal Permanent Residency (LPR).
The bipartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), an independent research wing of Congress, said if the per-country cap for employment-based immigrants was removed, many expects that Indian and Chinese nationals would dominate the flow of new employment-based LPRs for as many years as needed to clear out the accumulated queue of prospective immigrants from those countries.
This queue would include those with approved employment-based immigrant petitions waiting to file either a visa application with Department of State or an adjustment of status application with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the CRS said in its latest report.
The CRS regularly prepares reports on various issues for the lawmakers to take informed decisions. A copy of the report 'Permanent Employment-Based Immigration and the Per-country Ceiling' dated December 21 was made available to PTI, ahead of the new Congress beginning January 3, wherein several lawmakers are planning to introduce a legislation to eliminate per-country quota for issuing Green Cards to foreign nationals.
As of April 2018, a total of 306,601 Indian nationals – mostly IT professionals – were waiting in line for Green Cards, according to the USCIS figures. Indians constitute 78 per cent of the 395,025 foreign nationals waiting for Green Cards in just one category of employment-based LPR applications.
Due to the cap, the current wait period for the majority of Indians to get a Green Card is nine and half years, the CRS said, adding this could increase or decrease further depending on the number of new applications every year. India is followed by China with 67,031 in line for Green Cards.
Lawmakers favouring eliminating the per-country cap contend that such circumstances effectively encourage employers to sponsor prospective employment-based immigrants primarily from India.
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