Indian visa-holders see hope in Trump review |
Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1-B visa holders in the US waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump`s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1-B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery. Their hope is that merit-based H1-Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.Green cards can be a path to naturalization. H1-B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers. `Indentured servants`.The H1-B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country`s population is.
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