On Thursday, an immigration advocacy group representing Indian Americans, Immigration Voice requested the Biden administration not to issue the H1-B work visas to anyone born in India, till the removal of discriminatory country-cap on green card or permanent legal residency.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that lets US companies hire foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical knowledge. Biden administration has decided to allow employers of H-1B visa holders to start registrations online for the H1-B Visa lottery from March 9 for the fiscal year 2022.
In a statement, the Immigration Voice said: “The current per-country cap on issuing of green cards in the US has resulted in Indian professionals, mostly from the IT sector, having to wait for decades for their legal permanent residency. Issuing new H-1B visas to more Indians would add to this agonizing painful wait for green cards.”
President of Immigration Voice Aman Kapoor stated that issuing of H-1B visas will unwillingly lure over 60,000 additional Indian nationals “to engage in a life of indentured servitude where their very existence and the lives of their families will be completely subject to the whims of their employer, new administrations, or even individual immigration adjudicators having a bad day.”
Kapoor said that membership of Immigration Voice has urged the Biden administration to use its authority under Immigration and Nationality Act Section 212(f) to exclude any new individual born in India who aren’t currently in the United States legally from obtaining a new H-1B visa for the first time in the fiscal year 2022. He also said that the advocacy group has asked to not issue the H-1B visas until “the discriminatory per county limits on Employment-Based green cards are finally lifted” and immigrants from India are no longer treated badly.
Immigration Voice is a nonprofit organization working to solve issues faced by Indian high-skilled foreign workers in the United States.
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