US to vote on bill to remove country-cap on Green Card

Washington, July 9: American lawmakers will decide today on lifting the country-cap on issuing Green Cards through voting in Congress. The move may benefit thousands of highly-skilled Indian IT professionals.

 

Most Indian IT professionals are highly skilled and go to the US mainly on the H-1B work visas. They are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a seven percent per country quota on allotment of permanent legal residency.

With bipartisan support, the 'Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act' is expected to clear in the US House of Representatives.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), this bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from seven percent of the total number of such visas available that year to 15 percent. It also eliminates the seven percent cap for employment-based immigrant visas and removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.

The bill, however, has to be passed by the Senate before it can be signed into law by the US president. Some critics also claim that it will incentivize more low wage Indian graduates to take US jobs from middle-class American graduates.