Many Indians and other hoping to get a green card or permanent residency in United States may be disappointed if a proposed legislation comes into effect. Republican senator Tom Cotton and his Democratic colleague David Perdue on Tuesday proposed a Bill to slash the number of legal immigrants in the US by half in the next 10 years, reported Reuters.
The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, or RAISE Act, will cut the number of green cards issued every year from one million to half-a-million. The RAISE Act would slash immigration to 6,37,960 in its first year and to 5,39,958 by 2027.
Senator Cotton there has been a huge leap in the number of legal immigrations in the recent past and that has resulted in a “sharp decline in wages for working Americans”. “It’s time our immigration system started working for American workers,” Cotton added.
The Bill would also increase the waiting period to get a green card. Currently, it takes anything between 10 years and 35 years. The Bill might also also do away with the diversity visa lottery. Every year, the “diversity lottery” gives 50,000 permanent resident visas to natives of countries that have low rates of immigration to the US. The Bill reads, “The diversity lottery is plagued with fraud, advances no economic or humanitarian interest... The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.”
The RAISE Act reportedly has the support of Donald Trump’s administration. However, it may face many hurdles before it is passed by Congress, according to Reuters. Several Republicans even want a comprehensive immigration reform. Republican Senator John McCain lauded the contribution of immigrants and cited the example of Google co-founder Sergey Brins who came from Russia, and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen called the Bill “wrong and senseless”.
This Bill has been introduced at a time when Indian information technology firms are already wary of an executive order that will target work visa programmes. The High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 calls for more than doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders. The Bill proposes hiking the minimum wage for H-1B visa holders from $60,000 (Rs 40.7 lakh) to $130,000 (Rs 88 lakh).
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