Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: The long and agonising wait for green cards for people from India, China, Mexico and the Philippines is mainly due to the country-based quota system in its allocation which can be changed only by the US Congress, a senior official has said.
Douglas Rand, the Senior Advisor to the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said the annual limit established by Congress on family-sponsored preference green cards is 2,26,000 for the whole world while the annual limit on employment-based green cards is 1,40,000, according to a news report from Washington on May 19.
A Green Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants to the US as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of residing permanently.
For hundreds of thousands of Indian professionals, the wait for Green Card has currently been more than a decade and many a time the visa wait time goes back by years.
The number of employment-based green cards issued to people from India is roughly around 7,000-8,000 per year due to the seven per cent country cap limit. This 7,000-8,000 includes dependents of primary applicants, so roughly 2,000 Individual H-1B applicants get green cards every year for people of India.
