Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act: From perspective of Indians living in US

US House passed the H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 by a vote of 365 to 65

Trump administration is keenly eyeing serious changes to the immigration system that prevails from decades in the United States of America. Recently, the US House passed the H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 by a vote of 365 to 65, which eliminates per-country caps on green cards. And much to the delight of the people coming from India and China, this one is going to ease off all the pressures of waiting for years and years to finally get approval for the green card.

The Fairness of High-Skilled Immigrants Act is specifically designed to welcome the 'Skilled' professionals to get sheltered through a visa no matter to which country they belong to. By nodding to remove the per-country cap for the green card, it is going to be extremely easy for the Silicon Valley employers who are highly dependent on the immigration programs and always binge on grabbing the talent from Asian countries like India and China.

7% Cap not enough

The US has a 7 percent Green Card cap for each country and just from India there are more than 3,00,000 green cards pending for the approval at this stage and more applications are coming in for the process. And this 7 percent Cap is something that is a thing of worry for those candidates who are coming from a much-populated country.

John Roy, an Indian working professional from Texas who has been in the US for more than 6 years now opines, "There is a 7 percent cap for each country and if that is the case, it doesn't make any sense for countries like India and China who hold one-third of the world's population to have the same cap as other (smaller) countries like Bangladesh or Iceland, because these countries also have the same percentage of the cap. So when you are talking about the populated countries like India and China, the same percentage limit is not at all rational as it is natural that there will be more applicants from these countries."

The Green Card process is not at all easy as it looks, there are a lot of technical and legal implications that the employer and the employee have to go through. "Even though the process for a green card is difficult, I think it is required to make sure that the proper applicants are getting it and there is no difference in the process for people coming from different countries. It is same for everyone without discrimination," says Roy.

In order to get a Green Card, a very arduous process need to be followed, but if this bill becomes a law, then there are high chances the processing time will be reduced as there are not any clear-cut deadlines in each stage of this whole process. "I strongly feel that the processing time will surely be improved, but I am okay with the process that I have been going through for the Green Card because I think it is warranted and it is required even though the process is difficult," says Roy.

Increased Scrutiny came with Trump

Nothing much has changed after Trump took the charge of the office as no new law has been introduced or nothing has been scrapped so far. Things are overall same which were there during Obama's regime. But everyone has felt that the immigrants are at increased scrutiny of the overall process, be it H1B visas or the Green Card.

"(One) Thing that has changed after Trump came to power was the scrutiny for the legal immigrants have increased in the existing process. No law has changed except for the Buy American and Hire American Act. And because all the laws are being enforced in a stringent way, there are increased rejection rates overall. And a lot of them are fake cases but there are instances when the genuine cases are also getting rejected," concludes Roy.

If compared to the peer countries like Canada, then the Green Card cap is 53 percent, New Zealand has it at 59 percent, Australia has kept it at 63 percent and if this bill becomes law, then for United States the Green Card cap will go to 57 percent which will be under the apt range and will make the country more competitive.

Trump welcomes "Merit-based Immigration"

A lot of talks have been happening over President Donald Trump trying to bring in stringent policies for the immigrants in the United States. But all that Trump is leaning towards is fetching in the skilled talent that would actually benefit the country economically.

The bill that passed in the House has also launched some changes for the employment-based visas from FY 2020-22 by keeping a certain percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas.

Manas Krishna, another working professional from India living in the US, opined, "It is a blessing in a sense that visas are approved on a 'first come first serve' basis sparing us the frustratingly long wait and there is a significant increase in per country quota (7-15%) which is very welcoming news. Also, President Trump tweeted that the H1-B visa is a potential path to citizenship and that is music to my ears and several other corporate professionals like myself."

Indians who work here are all the time anxious about the question of 'what next' is in the box? Having this thought about preferring the skilled immigrants by the US administration, Gaurav Parashare, an Indian who has completed his MS from the State University of New York and started working with a precious metals company in Pennsylvania, completely understands the area of getting employed as a skilled worker. "People from other countries come to the US because this country has better jobs that pay handsome money, good work ethics and in return, we are giving our skills that are benefitting the economy of this country. So Trump's policy is to promote merit-based immigration, those who have an advanced degree from the US and students like me who have completed their masters here will get preference at every level."

Donald Trump is also considering to give a special preference to Master's degree holders while getting picked for the H1B lottery, but we do not know when that will come into the process. But the students who have come from countries like India seem to be very happy with this new development of the Green Card cap. "The students like me who come here, take the degree, start working here, then get picked for H1B, for us, the wait time to finally get the Green Card will probably reduce to half or less than half and this would benefit nothing but the country (US) as we all know how much the silicon valley is dependent on the skilled immigrants, especially from India," says Parashare.

The bill will now be going to the Senate and discussed there with a heated debate between the Democrats and the Republicans. And since there is an upper hand of Republicans in the Senate, no one really knows whether this bill would become law or just gets rejected. But the immigrants are hoping for a positive result to ease of all the tensions.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are the personal views of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)