US Lawmakers Seek Permanent Residence For H1B Visa Holders, Can Be Game Changer For Indians

Millions of people stuck for years in the employment-based Green Card backlog in the US, including a sizeable number of Indians, can hope for a lawful permanent residency in America by paying a supplemental fee if a new House bill is passed into law.

The move, if included in the reconciliation package and passed into law, is expected to help thousands of Indian IT professionals who are currently stuck in an agonising Green Card backlog.

There are reportedly 1.2 million people in the employment-based green card backlog.  A significant majority of them are from India.

Under the current system, no more than seven percent of employment-based green cards are available to individuals from a single country. As a result, individuals from countries with large populations — such as India and China — face decades-long wait times to achieve lawful permanent resident status.

 The lawmakers said in order to fully unlock the economic potential of high-skilled immigrants, a pathway to lawful permanent residence must be cleared and the system must be reformed. Reforming this immigration system will be especially helpful to the United States as its economy and workforce continues to recover from the pandemic, they added.

According to the committee print released by the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over immigration, an employment-based immigrant applicant with a “priority date that is more than 2 years before” can adjust to permanent residence without numerical limits by paying a “supplemental fee of USD 5,000.”

The fee is USD 50,000 for the EB-5 category (immigrant investors). The provisions expire in 2031, the Forbes magazine reported.

For a family-based immigrant who is sponsored by a US citizen and with a “priority date that is more than 2 years before”, the fee for getting a Green Card would be USD 2,500.

The supplement fee would be USD 1,500 if an applicant’s priority date is not within two years but they are required to be present in the country, according to the committee print. This fee would be in addition to any administrative processing fee paid by the applicant.

However, the bill does not contain permanent structural changes to the legal immigration system, including eliminating country caps for green cards or increasing the annual quotas of H-1B visas.

 “Indian nationals face a particularly daunting backlog of 80 years, and an anticipated 200,000 will die before achieving lawful permanent resident status,” the lawmakers said.

“This arbitrary cap is keeping some of the world’s most talented individuals from permanently calling America home, encouraging them to take their inventions, expertise, and creativity to other countries instead,” they wrote in the latter.

Most workers in the employment-based green card backlog are already in the United States on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as the H-1B visa for workers in specialty occupations, that are renewable but greatly restrict beneficiaries from reaching their full potential.

 H-1B holders are unable to change jobs or start their own businesses — despite the fact that they have been shown to boost overall productivity, wages, and new patents, they said.

 The temporary nature of the H-1B visa forces beneficiaries to live in a constant state of uncertainty, preventing them from becoming entrepreneurs, buying homes, employing more Americans, or otherwise fully establishing themselves as permanent fixtures within the American economy.

“An especially painful aspect of the H-1B experience is that dependent children, known as “Documented Dreamers,” are often forced to self-deport to their country of birth if they reach age 21 before their parent obtains a green card, despite having lived most of their lives in the United States,” the lawmakers said.