Lift 7% cap on green cards, urges India community leader

Washington: An eminent Indian-American community leader from Silicon Valley has urged US lawmakers to remove the prevailing seven per cent cap on green cards, observing that the country-specific limit on the most sought-after residency document has created extensive backlogs.

A Green Card is a document issued to immigrants to the US as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of residing in the country permanently. Speaking at the US-India summit held at the US Capitol on Wednesday, Ajay Jain Bhutoria, an entrepreneur and community leader, asked why there was a cap on the Green Card if not on an H-1 visa. "When we do not have a country's limit on giving an H-1 visa to support our companies, businesses and economy.

Why should we have a country cap limit on green card issuance," Bhutoria said at the summit organised by Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna in his capacity as Co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus. The per-country caps are numerical limits on the issuance of green cards to individuals from certain countries. Immigration law provides for approximately 140,000 employment-based green cards to be issued each year. However, only seven per cent of those green cards can go to individuals from a single country annually.

If the number of individuals being sponsored from a single country is greater than seven per cent of the annual available total, a backlog forms and the excess approved petitions are not considered until a visa becomes available and their petition falls within the initial seven per cent per-country cap.