‘Ending country cap in Green Cards may benefit India, China’

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 US citizenship, according to the latest Congressional report.

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 7% per country quota on allotment of Green Cards or the Legal Permanent Residency (LPR).

The bipartisan Congressional Research Service said if the per-country cap for employment-based immigrants was removed, many expect 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.

As of April 2018, a total of 3,06,601 Indian nationals were waiting in line for Green Cards, according to the USCIS. Indians constitute 78% of the 3,95,025 foreign nationals waiting for Green Cards in just one category of employmentbased 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. India is followed by China with 67,031 in line for Green Cards. Lawmakers favouring eliminating the per-country cap contend that such circumstances would encourage employers to sponsor employment-based immigrants primarily from India.