8 lakh people waiting for employment-based Green Cards in the US

More than 8 lakh immigrants working legally in the US are waiting for a Green Card. Most of those waiting are from India.

The backlog among Indians is so severe that an Indian citizen applying for a Green Card would most likely need to wait for another 50 years to obtain one.

The extremely long wait times can be attributed to a yearly quota system with a per-country cap that has not been changed since 1990.

The technology boom made India the largest source country of employment-based Green Card seekers in the US.

There have been huge debates in the US from temporary measures to address the issue to larger immigration concerns involving the annual Green Card quotas.

Some Congressmen have been pushing for measures to shorten the wait time so that Indian workers do not migrate to other countries. Immigration Experts fear that the incredibly long wait times could cause valuable, skilled immigrants to leave the US.

Critics of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act said that the Act does not increase the quota for employment-based Green Cards. They feel that that may worsen the backlog, increasing the wait times for all countries to up to 17 years.

Yogi Chhabra is an Indian IT professional living in Kentucky in the US for the past 21 years. He has been on the Green Card waitlist for the past 9 years. His eldest son is an US-educated mechanical engineer and has just turned 23. His son has been living in the US since he was 3 years old. However, since children older than 21 do not qualify as dependents on the H1B Visa, he may soon be deported to India. His son needs to find a job in the US in the next eight months if he wants to continue living in the US.

Mr Chhabra’s wife has a PhD and works on kidney transplant research. They say that if their son is forced to leave, they may have to leave the US as well.

The Green Card is the final step to becoming a naturalized US citizen. The US issues about 10 lakh Green Cards each year, more than a lakh of which are employment-based. 75% of all those waiting for employment-based Green Cards are Indians while the rest are Chinese.

Y-Axis offers a wide range of Visa and Immigration products as well as services for aspiring overseas students including Work Visa for the USA, Study Visa for the USA, and Business Visa for the USA.

If you are looking to Study, Work, Visit, Invest or Migrate to the USA, talk to Y-Axis, the World’s No.1 Immigration & Visa Company.

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