Trump's new immigration proposal: How it affects India

1. The move to establish a merit-based immigration system could benefit highly-skilled Indian immigrants, especially those from the IT sector.

2. However, the new policies would badly impact those thousands of Indian-Americans who want to bring in their family members to the US, particularly their aged parents.

3. Trump proposed ending extended-family chain migration by limiting family-based green cards to spouses and minor children and replace it with a merit-based system that prioritises skills and economic contributions over family connections.

4. Arguing for a merit-based immigration system, Trump told Congress that the current immigration system does not serve the national interest as it prioritizes extended family-based chain migration over skills-based immigration.

5. The goal of the merit-based system that awards green cards based on factors like education, employability and English language proficiency is "to promote assimilation and financial success", the White House said.

6. Trump also proposed terminating the diversity visa lottery, which makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually and aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States. This favors smaller countries with low rates of immigration, as against countries with large pool of immigrant hopefuls such as India, China, and Mexico.

7. Because of the large number of highly qualified Indians, most of the professionals from the country face an 11-year wait to get green cards and a merit-based system could cut down the delay.

8. However, there was no reference to the H-1B visas, the most sought after by Indian IT professionals, in the proposal which Trump sent to Congress.

9. One of the items in the proposal that concerns Indians is the future of those brought in illegally by their parents as children and have grown up here. Trump has informed Congress that his immigration priorities must be enacted in exchange for extending protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, guaranteed under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

10. It is estimated that there about 7,500 Indians whose fate hangs in the balance after Trump ended the DACA program last month. The US President has given Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before recipients begin to lose their status and are faced with deportation.










(With inputs from Agencies)