US to remove country cap on Green Cards: How H-1B visa holding Indians might benefit

The United States lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill which lifts the existing seven per cent country-cap on issuing Green Cards. Passed by the US House of Representatives, if the bill is signed into a law, it would benefit the talented professionals from other countries who have applied for permanent residency in the United States by reducing their waiting period. A Green Card allows a person to live and work permanently in the US. The move would also help thousands of highly-skilled Indian IT professionals who hold H-1B visas.

Most Indian IT professionals work in the United States on the H-1B work visas. They are often on the negative side of the current immigration system which imposes a seven per cent per country quota on allotment of the coveted Green Cards or permanent legal residency. If the cap is removed, it would help professionals from countries like India, for whom the wait for Green Card is more than a decade. Some of the recent studies have said the waiting period for Indian IT professionals on H-1B visas is more than 70 years!

According to the current guidelines by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, no more than seven per cent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year. 

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

But, the bill still needs to be passed by the Senate, wherein the Republicans enjoy a majority, before it can be signed into law by President Donald Trump.