US to free 5.5 lakh job-based green cards

11 Sep, 2008, 1230 hrs IST,Urmi A Goswami, ET Bureau

  NEW DELHI: In its final weeks of the 110th session of the US Congress, lawmakers are expected to attempt to push through some immigration related legislation.

Among this is a measure to “recapture” unused employment based immigration visas from 1997 to 2007. This would roughly mean some 550,000 employment-based (Green card) immigration visas will be made available.

There is a great deal of pressure that is being built up on American lawmakers to push this legislative measure through. While it is not an immigration reform measure, it has been touted as a “modest” recapture measure to meet the manpower requirement of American employers.

Compete America, a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations, has written to Senators and Representatives asking them to support two legislation, HR 5882 (in the House of Representatives) and S 3414 (in the Senate) which provide for the “recapture” both employment-based (EB) and family-based green cards that the US Congress authorised in the past, but remained unused due to government processing delays.

In a letter signed by 80 members of the coalition has argued that “America’s future is at stake.” The letter states: “Failure to enact a recapture provision will further hamper US employers in the global competition for the world’s best talent, as more and more extremely valuable professionals from around the world take their education and abilities to other nations that strategically pursue policies to attract these individuals.”.

They have argued that the current US system, which sends out the message that it is difficult to obtain permanent resident status. In this context, they have argued that the US Congress “should quickly pass this modest measure that keeps highly talented individuals working to benefit the American economy.” In US House of Representatives, the recapture measure is a bipartisan effort while in the Senate it has been sponsored by Democrat lawmakers.




The coalition has also endorsed two other legislative measures HR 6039/S 3084 and HR 5921. The former proposes to exempt highly educated, foreign-born students earning an advanced degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics from a US university from the annual EB green card limit.

The latter suggests eliminating the per country limits on EB green card distribution at present it is at 7 per cent. Both these moves would be favourably viewed by India. Students from India make the largest block of foreign students in the United States. Also given the high demand, India exhausts its green card quota leading to huge backlogs.

In the meantime, the US House Committee on Judiciary will take up several other legislative proposals for its consideration. These include the lifting of the annual cap on immigrant visas for nurses and physical therapists till 2011. The overall vacancy rate for nurses in the United States is 10.1 per cent.

The Congress will also consider a legislation making it possible for any person who served honourably as a member of the US armed forces in certain “contingency operations” the opportunity to become a naturalised citizen.

In doing so, the proposed law will waive several inadmissibility provisions which have till now barred granting of American citizenship to foreigners even though they have served in the US Army. The US house Committee on Judiciary is expected to take up four of these legislation in the next week.