Washington: Nearly one lakh employment-based green cards are at risk of being wasted within two months, angering Indian IT professionals whose wait for legal permanent residency has now extended to decades. A green card, officially known as a permanent residence card, is a document issued to immigrants as evidence that the holder has been granted permanent residency in the United States.
Indian professional Sandeep Pawar told PTI that the employment-based quota for immigrants this year is 2,61,500, which is much higher than the normal quota of 140,000. “Unfortunately, under the law, if these visas are not issued by September 30, they are lost forever,” he said.
He said the current pace of visa processing by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, shows they will make more than 100,000 green cards useless. This fact was also recently confirmed by the Ministry of External Affairs in charge of determining visa usage.
Pawar regretted that the additional 100,000 green cards available this year would be wasted if the USCIS or the Biden administration did not act. The White House did not respond to queries in this regard. Meanwhile, 125 Indians and Chinese citizens living in the US have filed a lawsuit to stop the green card from being wasted by the administration.
