Green Card hopes of thousands of Indian Professionals in the USA dashed
Indian and other foreign professionals are eager to get a U.S. permanent resident visa, or green card, since green card holders can work for any employer in the U.S. Their spouse and children can also work in the U.S. and their children can attend public schools without hindrance. A green card also enables the holder to travel freely outside the U.S. as well as qualify for U.S. citizenship after five years.
In fiscal year 2021, the number of green cards to be issued to professionals rose to 260,000, up from the 140,000 issued in previous years. The increase was a result of unused family-sponsored green cards from fiscal year 2020 being allotted to professionals in fiscal year 2021.
Thousands of Indian professionals, on temporary work visas in the U.S., were excited by the potential issuance of additional green cards. They assumed they had a rare chance to qualify, as 90% of the additional green cards would go to Indians since there were not enough applicants from other countries.
But it appears that next week, with the fiscal year ending on September 30th, about 90,000 of the extra green cards for professionals in fiscal 2021 will expire since they were not used.
The slow processing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the government agency which issues green cards, is due to a shortage of staff and the manual sorting of a flood of applications which have to be sent by postal mail - not via an online portal.
Those who were asked to apply this year, but did not get a green card, will lose their place in line and will have to re-apply in subsequent years.
There are over 1.2 million foreigners awaiting green cards. The current wait for Indians, who make up half of all applicants, exceeds 15 years. Each year, Indians are eligible for only 7% of the green cards issued, which is the birth country maximum quota allotted to each country, regardless of population size or H1-B visa eligibility for green card acquisition. .
The expiry of the extra green cards next week will hurt, primarily Indian applicants. Some Indians lobbied Democratic lawmakers to include provisions to add the expiring green cards to the fiscal 2022 quota in their proposed immigration reform package. The reform was to be part of the $3.5 trillion economic bill, now under consideration by President Joe Biden’s administration.
But this week, the U.S. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that the Democratic Party cannot combine the immigration reform proposals with the economic bill. The proposed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act are policy changes which “far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” MacDonough ruled.
Ilhan Omar, a U.S. Representative from Minnesota, and other left-wing Democrats in Congress are saying President Joe Biden’s Administration “can and should ignore” the parliamentarian’s ruling. But Biden and the Democratic leaders are seeking other ways to pass the immigration reform. In any case, these measures are highly unlikely to become law before September 30, in effect blocking any benefit to Indians in the line for the fiscal 2021 professional green cards.
In fiscal 2021, about 150,000 family-based green cards were not issued due to closures of U.S. consulates and the impact of COVID-19. So, some immigration lawyers speculate the unused cards will be added to the fiscal 2022 professional green card quota.
But Hope Border Institute, focused on U.S.-Mexico borderland communities, and other lobbying groups are pushing for the unused fiscal 2021 green cards to be issued under the Diversity Visa Program. Since the program benefits citizens of countries with low levels of immigration to the United State, citizens of countries with more than 50,000 green cards awarded in the last five years are ineligible, including India, UK, Mexico, Canada, China and Brazil.
Also, as a report in The Hill notes, “thus far, the (Biden) administration has shown no signs that it will expend political capital to assign the expiring green cards” to Indian professionals. The administration fears litigants would stop the action in court.
Instead of waiting for fifteen years to get a green card, Indian professionals in the U.S. – as well as students in India considering taking on loans to study at U.S. universities - should migrate to Canada. The chances of getting a work visa and permanent residency, especially for engineering, technology and science graduates, are very good; in fact, those with advanced skills can get a permanent resident visa in a few months.
Canada faces a shortage of skilled labor and also has a population which is rapidly aging. Equally important, American and other companies, seeking to bypass the visa restrictions in the U.S., are expanding their operations and hiring in Canada. This year, for instance, Infosys, an Indian information technology services company with a market value of $100 billion, said it is expanding its operations in Calgary and the Toronto region, expecting to double its Canadian workforce to 4,000 by 2023.
