US Green Card: A new US Bill has given hope to a huge number of Indians to get a Green Card without having to be stuck in the waitlist for years. There is a huge backlog of employment-based Green Cards in the US with years of waitlist and a sizable number of Indians are included in the millions of people waiting to get lawful permanent residency in the country. Now, though, if a new House Bill is passed into law, these people will have a hope of getting lawful permanent residency in the US in exchange for a supplemental fee, according to a report in IE.
If this Bill is indeed passed into law, thousands of Indian IT professionals could benefit from it, not having to wait in the very long Green Card backlog. Green Card – officially called the Permanent Resident Card – is a sought after document because it provides evidence that an immigrant bearing this card has the privilege of residing in the US permanently.
As per the committee report that the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released, any employment-based immigrant applicant having a priority date more than two years before the immigrant “requests a waiver of the numerical limitations” would be able to adjust to permanent residence without numerical limits in exchange for a supplemental fee of US$5,000.
On the other hand, people seeking permanent residency under the immigrant investors category would have to pay a fee of US$50,000. As per Forbes, these provisions are set to expire in 2031.
Meanwhile, an immigrant who is sponsored by a US citizen and is seeking the Green Card having a priority date more than two years before would be able to get residency without numerical limits after paying a fee of US$2,500.
In cases where an applicant’s priority date is not within a period of two years, they would need to pay a supplemental fee of US$1,500. However, they would need to be in the country and this amount would be over and above any other administrative processing fee that they might have paid.
While the Bill can provide some relief to the people in the huge backlog, it is not proposing any structural changes to the immigration system itself, and therefore, the country caps on Green Cards and the current annual quotas of the H-1B visas are most likely to remain unchanged.
However, before the Bill can become a law, it would need to pass through the Judiciary Committee, then the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the President, which means there could still be some time before the Bill turns into law.