An Indian Will Need To Wait For 50 years To Get American Green Card; 8 Lakh Immigrants Are Waiting, Mostly Indians

Right now, the H-1B visa and green card situation of the US is quite grave. There are as much as 8 lakh people waiting in line for the green card and a maximum number of them are Indians. 

There has been a lot of news in the recent past about the complications that the Donald Trump-led government of the US has imposed on the rules of the visa and green card. 

8 Lakh Immigrants Waiting For Green Card; Why Is The Process Prolonged?

As of now, there are about 8 lakh immigrants who are working legally in the United States of America, and wishing to take up permanent residence in one of the most popular countries of the world. However, this won’t be happening anytime soon, as there is a huge backlog that has set back the timeline of the process of obtaining a green card by at least 50 years. 

The reason behind this? The policy battle that is going on in the US right now. As per reports, this policy talks about an annual permissible amount of green cards to be handed out. Also, the policy discusses the limit of green cards that will be given to each country. 

Also, these limits were introduced a long time before India went through a tech boom in the recent past, making India one of the top countries to seek employment-based green cards. 

Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist and immigration attorney, said, “What does that ultimately mean? Valuable, skilled people decide they should leave because they’re never going to get what they had hoped for. And valuable people don’t come because they figure our system is so broken they can’t see their way through it. Therefore, other countries bidding for these skilled workers get those workers. Companies in America move jobs abroad to employ those skills elsewhere. And American prosperity suffers.” 

Morrison has also written the last bill that boosted the number of employment green cards in 1990 when he was in Congress and represented Connecticut. 

Debates For Hurrying The Process Of Granting Green Cards; Here’s Why

The Government of the US annually grants about 1 million green cards, of which more than one lakh are based on employment grounds. About 75% of the employed immigrants, 75% are Indians who are waiting in line and the remaining number of people are Chinese. 

There are now debates in the US that discuss if there should be a temporary measure to bring down the waiting time for the green cards. Also, they are also discussing if the number of green cards should be increased, and to increase the number of green cards handed out per-country as well. 

There are also some Congressmen who have been trying to hurry the process to make sure that talented Indian workers do not choose to migrate to other countries.