It is a good news for Indian Professionals that Biden administration would reduce stringent restrictions set by Trump. With a motto to increase the number of high-skilled visas, Biden would reverse some decisions on H-1B.
According to PTI, this would be a part of Biden’s comprehensive immigration reform that will be implemented either in one go or in separate pieces.
In order to protect the American Workers from unemployment due to COVID, In June, Trump had suspended H-1B visas and the other foreign work visas until 2020.
Later, in October, Trump had further announced restrictions on the H-1B non-immigrant visa programme which aimed at providing H-1B petitions to only qualified beneficiaries and petitioners.
Having said, these rules were not for the individuals already in the US, but were meant for new visa-holders who will be going to the US.
Fortunately, the Biden administration is focused at growing and they plan to create a new visa category allowing cities and counties to petition for higher levels of immigrants.
According to a policy document issued by the Biden campaign, “High skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivise recruiting workers already in the US for in-demand occupations. An immigration system that crowds out high-skilled workers in favour of only entry level wages and skills threatens American innovation and competitiveness,”
“Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labour market and not used to undermine wages. Then, Biden will support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs,” it said.
For the most part, in the U.S, most of the technology companies depend on H-1B visas and they hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
To engage in skilled work, green card holders are allowed to gain lawful permanent residence in the US. At present, each year, the number of employment-based visas is capped at 140,000.
As per the policy document, graduates of PhD programmes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields in the US would be exempted from any cap as they would be contributing to the world economy.
Besides, it is likely that Biden would provide citizenship to nearly 5,00,000 Indians.
