Green Card Cap Relaxed | 12 Jul 2019

The US House of Representatives has passed the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act or HR1044, that removes the 7% country-cap on Green Card applicants.

• This bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15% and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas.
• Currently, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services rules: No more than 7% of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year.
• The act if becomes a law, Indians would be the biggest beneficiaries of such a move.
  • Indian IT professionals, who come to the US mainly on the H-1B work visas, are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a 7% per country quota on allotment of the Green Card or permanent legal residency.
  • Further, Donald Trump's policy of ‘Buy American, Hire American’ has resulted in numerous legal and administrative changes aimed at discouraging Indian tech workers’ immigration.
  • Lifting the per-country cap would mainly benefit professionals from countries like India, for whom the wait for Green Card is more than a decade.