Biden urges Congress to act on immigration reforms to make Indians get green cards fast

President Biden has urged the Congress to act on the immigration reform bill for Indian doctors and other professionals to get their green cards fast, his spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Wednesday.

“He believes that there should be faster processing, that our immigration system is broken at many levels,” she said at a briefing on Wednesday.

“He is eager to for Congress to move forward with action there.”

Earlier, immigration advocates and experts had said that Biden’s comprehensive immigration bill which was prepared to overhaul Trump era immigration system, might not pass in the congress, as it might face tough opposition from senators.

Subsequently, Indian American front line health workers held a demonstration against Green Card backlog in front of the US Capitol and urged the Biden administration to eliminate the limit on employment-based visas by country.

Asked about the delays in processing work authorization for spouses of those holding H1-B and L1 visas, Psaki said: “The reason we want to push for action on immigration (legislation) on the (Capitol) Hill is to move forward with expediting the processing and doing that on several levels, including a number of the visas.a

“That`s part of the reason why we think that`s such an important piece to move forward on.”

Last month, Democrats introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress that would remove the country quotas for green cards.

An estimated 8.15 lakh Indians holding H-1B Visa are in the green-card backlog list in the US. It will take approximately 84 years for most of them to get through the process.The worst will be the cases of their children who number 11.57 lakh, a majority of whom will age out before getting a green-card, leading to a family separation.

According to a study conducted recently by David J. Bier, an immigration policy analyst with a US-based think-tank Cato Institute, 1.36 lakh children from Indian families fall in the backlog of this particular category and 84,675 of them (or 62%) will age out without getting a green card.

Earlier, legislative action to remove country caps failed in the last Congress because the Senate and House of Representatives versions of the bill had differences that were not reconciled in time and it lapsed.

The Senate in December 2020 and the House in 2019 had passed the separate versions of the bill.

H-1B visas are for professionals and L-1 visas are for those transferred by their companies to the US.

Hours after getting sworn in as president,the Biden administration had formally withdrawn Trump administration proposal to scrap the functioning of H4 EAD (Employment Authorization Document) that allows the spouses of H-1B visa holders to work.

H4 EAD was introduced by the Barack Obama administration in 2015.

As of December 2017, USCIS had approved 1,26,853 applications for employment authorization for H-4 visa holders. According to a 2018 report by Congressional Research Service (CRS), 93 per cent of approved applications for H-4 employment authorization were issued to individuals born in India, and five per cent were issued to individuals born in China.

According to PTI, an H-4 visa is issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa holders, most of whom are Indian IT professionals.