Biden Brings Good News For Indian H-1B Holders, Green Card Applicants

Biden Brings Good News For Indian H-1B Holders, Green Card Applicants - Sakshi Post

Biden plans to increase H-1B visa limit and remove country quota for green cards

WASHINGTON: Its good news for Indian  -American Indians in the United States  as the US President-elect Joe Biden plans to increase the number of high-skilled visas, including the H-1B.

According to a policy document issued by the Biden campaign, he plans to eliminate the limit on employment-based visas by country, which are expected to benefit thousands of Indian professionals who were impacted by  the immigration policies of the outgoing Trump administration.

As part of the comprehensive immigration reforms that the Biden administration plans to work on in future they are expected to reverse the move of the outgoing Trump administration to revoke work permits to the spouses of H-1B visas

Some more plans, which will bring much cheer to the Indian diaspora, include:

To first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labour market and not used to undermine wages.

Support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs.

H-1B visas, which expand the available pool of high skilled workers in the US, is a non-immigrant visa that allows American companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

Employment-based visas, also known as green cards, allow migrants to gain lawful permanent residence in the US in order to engage in skilled work.

Noting that currently, the number of employment-based visas is capped at 140,000 each year, without the ability to be responsive to the state of the labour market or demands from domestic employers,

Biden  along with Indian- origin Vice President-elect Kamala Harris by his side will work with Congress to increase the number of visas awarded for permanent, employment-based immigration — and promote mechanisms to temporarily reduce the number of visas during times of high US unemployment.

Biden will also exempt from any cap recent graduates of PhD programmes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields in the US who make some of the most important contributions to the economy.

Biden believes that foreign graduates of a US doctoral programme should be given a green card with their degree and that losing these highly trained workers to foreign economies is a disservice to our own economic competitiveness.

The Biden administration plans to create a new visa category to allow cities and counties to petition for higher levels of immigrants to support their growth.

Biden will support a programme to allow any county or municipal executive of a large or midsize county or city to petition for additional immigrant visas to support the region's economic development strategy, provided employers in those regions certify there are available jobs, and that there are no workers to fill them.

Biden believes that keeping families together and allowing eligible immigrants to join their American relatives on US soil is critically important. Biden will support family-based immigration by preserving family unification as a foundation of our immigration system; by allowing any approved applicant to receive a temporary non-immigrant visa until the permanent visa is processed.

He also plans to support legislation that treats the spouse and children of green card holders as the immediate relatives exempting them from caps, and allowing parents to bring their minor children with them at the time they immigrate," the policy paper said.

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