Indian American Health Workers Hold Demonstration In front of the US Capitol Over Green Card Backlog

Indian American frontline health care workers on Wednesday 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.

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.

The US issues only 1.40 lakh green cards a year for employment-based applicants and there is a 7% per country cap. This restrictive policy poses great challenges to Indians holding H-1B visa who out number applicants from other countries.

According to the findings, employment based green card backlog from India (EB-2 and EB-3 skilled category) has reached 7.41 lakh in April 2020, with an expected wait time of 84 years.

“We are frontline COVID warriors, and we are here to tell how we have been short changed into a life of perpetual indentured servitude. Each of us has a story. We are here from all over the country asking for justice. Justice that has precluded us for decades now,” Dr Raj Karnatak, an infectious disease and critical care physician and Dr Pranav Singh, a pulmonary and critical care physician, said, PTI reported.

“Most of us are from India. We trained in the US and took oath as physicians to serve the sick and needy. Most of us are serving the rural and undeserved areas. We are in a Green Card backlog due to archaic country caps that allow no country to get more than seven percent of employment-based green cards,” said the two Indian American doctors’ organizers of the peaceful protest said in a joint statement, the PTI report said.

According to them, due to decades of backlog, many high-skilled immigrants are not able to change jobs due to fear of losing the spot in the Green Card line and are indentured to one employer.

“Can only work in the specialty occupation the visa is allotted for decades. Many healthcare workers could not serve in COVID-19 hot spots as the visas are tied to the job and employer,” they said.

The small group of protesters said that President Joe Biden can direct United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to end the Green Card backlog for the front line healthcare workers by utilizing the unused green cards in the past years.

There was an HR 1044 fairness bill that was passed in the House of Representatives by 365 votes in 2019 and its senate equivalent S386 passed the Senate in 2020, PTI report said.