Nearly 7.19 lakh Indians are awaiting their employment-based green cards as of September 2021, noted a study published by the Cato Institute. Shockingly, the wait time is estimated to be 90 years (more than the average lifespan of a person!) if no measures are taken to address bureaucratic delays in green card issuance.
These figures underline the necessity of reforms in the US immigration system, which unfortunately is keeping skilled immigrants away from the jobs needing them. Meanwhile, data also reveals that 2,30,000+ green cards under family and employment categories were unused in the period between 1992 and 2022. So, in an attempt to clear the long-pending green card backlog, the US President’s Advisory Commission has given its green signal to the proposal that unused green cards be recaptured. This move is expected to provide relief to over 1.4 million immigrants, who have been waiting for their green cards for years.
Picture Credit: Fileright.com
Why is this Green Card Recapture Recommended?
The US has a limit on annual green card issuance to immigrants. (A Green Card or Permanent Resident Card is an official document granting its bearer the permission to reside and work in the US permanently). This limit is set at 1,40,000 for employment-based green cards and 2,26,000 for family-sponsored green cards. Further, there is a 7% country-based quota system for these categories, which doesn’t take into account either the country’s population or the demand for green cards from them. So, the US doesn’t process more than 25,620 family and employment-based green cards annually to immigrants of a particular country despite receiving a high volume of applications, which only keeps increasing year after year. This led to accumulation of green card petitions, especially from countries like India and China.
Indian-American entrepreneur, Ajay Bhutoria, also a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, recommended the recapture of the green cards that have remained unissued due to administrative complexities and delays. Reallocating these lost opportunities to those waiting in hope can help unburden the government by facilitating the clearance of some backlogged applications every year in addition to processing the annual limit of green cards for these categories.
What does Recapture of Unused Green Cards Mean to Indian Immigrants Affected by Green Card Backlog?
As is well-known, a vast number of Indians fly to USA every year in pursuit of their American Dream. Most of them are usually H1B visa holders with ambitions to settle permanently in the US. Their applications for an employment-based green card are likely to get stuck in the mire of backlogs created by the per-country quota system. Situations turned so hopeless in the past for certain immigrants including Dr. Pranav Singh, who took a flight back to India being fed up with the long green card wait period.
Data suggests that the US issues around 7000 to 9000 employment-based green cards to Indians annually. If the dependents of primary applicants are excluded, then approximately 2000 H1B visa holders from India get green cards while the number of H1B work visas issued every year is close to 85,000. Even if we assume that only one fourth of them apply for a green card in a particular year, much less than one fourth of the total applicants would receive it and the rest would slip into the mounting backlog.
The excruciatingly long wait time for Indians to get green cards is a result of this widening gap between the number of applications received and the country-based cap on green card issuance. Under these circumstances, recapture of green cards unused over the years can prove to be beneficial to thousands of Indian immigrants waiting to get their hands on the most-coveted green cards.
Although the green card recapture recommendation has been approved at the White House, it doesn’t take effect until it gets a Congressional nod. So, it remains to be seen how long it takes for this bill to translate into action. Hope the recommendation for recapture of unused green cards won’t meet the fate of the RELIEF Act that sought to keep immigrant families together and the failure of the EAGLE Act that sought to phase out the per-country limit on the issuance of employment-based green cards to Indians.
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