WASHINGTON: Green Card For A Fee, Proposes US Bill; Indians May Benefit

WASHINGTON: Millions of people stuck for
years in the employment-based Green Card backlog in the US, including a sizable
number of Indians, can hope for a lawful permanent residency in America by
paying a supplemental fee if a new House bill is passed into law.

The move,
if included in the reconciliation package and passed into law, is expected to
help thousands of Indian IT professionals who are currently stuck in an
agonising Green Card backlog.

A Green
Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to
immigrants as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of
residing permanently in the US.

According
to the committee print released by the US House of Representatives Judiciary
Committee, which has jurisdiction over immigration, an employment-based
immigrant applicant with a “priority date that is more than 2 years
before” can adjust to permanent residence without numerical limits by
paying a “supplemental fee of $5,000.”

The fee
is $50,000 for the EB-5 category (immigrant investors). The provisions expire
in 2031, the Forbes magazine reported.

For a
family-based immigrant who is sponsored by a US citizen and with a
“priority date that is more than 2 years before”, the fee for getting
a Green Card would be USD 2,500.

The
supplement fee would be  $1,500 if an applicant’s priority date is not
within two years but they are required to be present in the country, according
to the committee print. This fee would be in addition to any administrative
processing fee paid by the applicant.

However,
the bill does not contain permanent structural changes to the legal immigration
system, including eliminating country caps for green cards or increasing the
annual quotas of H-1B visas.

Before
becoming law, the provisions would have to pass the Judiciary Committee, the
House of Representatives and the Senate and be signed by the president, the
report said.

According
to a report in CBSNews, if successful, the legalisation plan would allow
undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, Temporary Protected
Status (TPS) beneficiaries, farmworkers and other pandemic-era essential
workers to apply for permanent US residency, or green cards.

Reacting
to the bill, David J Bier, Immigration policy analyst at Cato Institute, said,
“employment-based applicants can adjust if they have waited 2 years from
their priority date… this is almost like abolishing the EB caps for
adjustment applicants who can pay $5K. Awesome!”

“For
EB5, it’s $50K fee. Even those who can’t afford the fees or who are abroad
would benefit from freeing up this cap space for others. It’s unfair that the
bill maintains the country caps as is, so Indians and Chinese will be the only
EB applicants required to pay the $5K/50K,” he said in a series of tweets.

He said
that the base caps for diversity, family, and #H1B all remain the same.

“Since
H1B is the feeder for most EB, that’s basically like keeping the EB cap the
same. No reforms to #H2A, #H2B, or other work programs, so nothing to help
unskilled workers/address the border,” he said.

“Basically,
this bill will help a few legal immigrants abroad indirectly, but the main
purpose is integration of existing immigrants. That’s a noble cause, but the
immigration/migration part of immigration reform is just left out. No new
pathways for workers, same system,” he tweeted.

US
Congressmen, including Indian-American Raja Krishnamoorthi had last month urged
their Congressional colleagues to support their move to employment-based Green
Card backlog as part of budget reconciliation.

 A group of 40 US lawmakers, led
by Raja Krishnamoorthi, had written to Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi and Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying the budget reconciliation package
provides relief to these individuals stuck in the employment-based Green Card
backlog, thereby strengthening the economy in the process.