• Saturday, July 27, 2024

HEADLINE STORY

More than 400k Indians will die waiting for an American green card: report

About 424,000 employment-based applicants will die waiting, and over 90 percent of them will be Indians, said a report from Cato Institute.

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By: Shubham Ghosh

MORE than 400,000 Indians will die before receiving a green card to the US, a new report has revealed, adding that more than 1,100,000 (1.1 million) applications from Indians are pending in America’s employment-based green card backlog.
A green card or a Permanent Resident Card is a document that is issued to US immigrants that give them permanent residence in that country.
American think tank Cato Institute has said in its report that Indians make up 63 per cent of the total 1,800,000 employment-based green-card applications that are now pending in the country. This adds to the 8,300,000 pending applications from the family-sponsored system.
The report said for new applicants from India, such a massive backlog is effectively “a life sentence” with more than 134 years of waiting period.

“About 424,000 employment-based applicants will die waiting, and over 90 percent of them will be Indians. Given that Indians are currently half of all new employer-sponsored applicants, roughly half of all newly sponsored immigrants will die before they receive a green card,” it said.

US employs a significant number of people from India and China for STEM roles but only seven per cent of employment-based green cards can annually go to individuals from a country.

Long waiting period for green cards is turning into a major crisis in the US as it has hit several Indian applicants despite the current Joe Biden administration and many Indian-American lawmakers trying to find a solution.

The report said the “astounding” backlogs underscores that legal immigration to the US is becoming “nearly impossible”.

“Even to get to the point of entering the backlog takes an enormous amount of good fortune, and the lucky few that make it through the labyrinth face the daunting prospect of never actually receiving green cards in decades or even their lifetimes,” the report added.

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