Update : Green Card

In what could be a major boost to Indian Engineers and Researchers aiming to work in the United States, the lower house of the US Legislature, the House of Representatives, passed the High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019. This bill will remove any cap on the family-based immigrant visas offered to citizens of each country and completely do away with the country-wise caps on employment-based immigrant visas.

What has happened?

• With the passage of this bill, the US lawmakers have removed the 7% country-cap on issuing Green Cards.
• This bill will also increase the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of visas available per year to 15%.
• It has also removed the offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.

What happens now?

The Bill will now have to pass in the Upper house of the American Legislature, the US Senate following which it will have to be to be signed by President Donald Trump to become a law. While the US House of Representatives has a Democratic Party majority, the Senate is dominated by the Republicans. President Trump is also a Republican.

Who will benefit?

The bill will mainly benefit the Indian IT professionals who are highly skilled immigrants and come to the US mainly on the H-1B work visas. Lifting the per-country cap would benefit professionals from India for whom the wait for Green Card (Permanent Citizenship) is more than a decade.