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Thursday, February 7, 2019

Bills introduced in the US House of Representatives and Senate to remove per-country green card limits Wed Feb 06,2019

Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and the Senate have introduced identical legislations, which if passed would end per-country green card limit and benefit hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals waiting to gain permanent legal residency in the country.

In the Senate, Republican Mike Lee and Democratic presidential aspirant Kamala Harris introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Wed Feb 06,2019, a bill that would remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards

An identical bill -- Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (HR 1044) -- was tabled in the US House of Representatives by Congressman Zoe Lofgren and Ken Buck, Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, with co-sponsorship of a bipartisan group of 112 Congressmen.

If passed by Congress and signed into law, the legislations would benefit hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals on H-1B visas whose current wait time for permanent legal residency is more than a decade.

The H-1B visa, most sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise

Top companies from the Silicon Valley like Google and corporate bodies such as US Chambers of Commerce are backing the legislations.

The bill has also been endorsed by Immigration Voice, Compete America Coalition, the Information Technology Industry Council, Google, Walmart, the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, The Heritage Foundation, La Raza, and many others.


Note

The United States makes currently 140,000 green cards available every year to employment-based immigrants, including many who first come here on temporary H-1B or L visas.

The existing law, however, provides that not more than seven per cent of these green cards can go to nationals of any one country — even though some countries are more populous than others.

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