Washington: The US House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on a legislation that seeks to lift the country-cap on issuing green cards. Being supported by more than 310 lawmakers from both the Republican and the Democratic Party, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is all set to sail through the 435-member House of Representatives.
Buoyed by the fact of 203 Democrats and 108 Republicans co-sponsoring the bill, the proponents of the legislation are using a fast-track process which requires 290 votes to pass a bill without hearing and amendments.
Lifting the per-country cap on Green Card would mainly benefit high-tech professionals on H-1B work visas from countries like India, for whom the wait for Green Card is more than a decade. Some of the recent studies have said the waiting period for Indian IT professionals on H-1B visas is more than 70 years.
The Library of Congress Tuesday said the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, also known as HR 1044, is the most viewed bill in the week beginning July 7.
According to independent Congressional Research Service (CRS), this bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from seven percent of the total number of such visas available that year to 15 percent and eliminates the seven percent cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.
The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY 2020-22 by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas.“Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85 percent shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country,” CRS said.
The bill, however, has to be passed by the Senate, wherein the Republicans enjoy a majority, before it can be signed into law by the US president. A similar bill being supported by a bipartisan group of senators including Senator Kamala Harris is slated to come up for consideration soon. Both the identical bills in the Senate and the House were introduced on February 7 this year.
In the House it was introduced by Congressman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat who represents portions of Northern California's Silicon Valley, and Republican Ken Buck from Colorado, while in the Senate it was introduced by Harris, and Mike Lee from Utah.
In a news report, Breitbart on Tuesday described it as a giveaway legislation to 300,000 Indian H-1B visa workers. This will incentivize “more low wage Indian graduates” to take US jobs from middle class American graduates, it said and urged Republican lawmakers supporting the bill to withdraw their co-sponsorship.
-Lalit K Jha
