Green Cards Backlog | An Immigration Lawyer Details How a New Bill in US Congress Will Benefit Indians

Earlier this month, a group of influential United States lawmakers, led by House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee Chair Zoe Lofgren, introduced a bill in Congress known as the Jumpstart Our Legal Immigration System Act.

It proposes to reactivate almost 4,00,000 unused family and employment-based visas (about 222,000 unused family-sponsored visas and about 157,000 employment-based visas) to reduce a massive Green Card backlog.

According to 2020 report, the backlog for an Indian national to get permanent residency or Green Card is more than 195 years, with recent data from the US State Department recording around four million individuals waiting for a family-sponsored immigrant visa and around one million individuals waiting for a employment-based immigrant visa.

To understand the bill better, The Quint spoke to Naresh M Gehi, the founder and principal attorney at Gehis Immigration & International Legal Services, about what the bill means for Indian immigrants and how it will benefit them, and why the Joe Biden administration is making such overtures to Indians.