Washington: US President Donald Trump's
immigration framework will end the diversity lottery visa to
help reduce green card backlog of high-skilled workers, the
White House said today amid growing demands by Indian H-1B
visa holders to remove the per country-limit on its allotment.
Indian-Americans, most of whom are highly skilled and
come to the US mainly on H-1B work visas are the worst
sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a
seven per cent per country quota on allotment of green cards
or permanent legal residency.
As a result, the current wait period for Indian skilled
immigrants for green card can be as long as 70 years.
Over the last one week, many Indian skilled immigrants
gathered in Washington DC from various parts of the US to ask
the Trump Administration and Congress to remove this major
anomaly in the immigration system.
"President Trump's framework would end the visa lottery
programme and reallocate some of the visas to help reduce
backlog of high-skilled, employment-based immigrant cases,"
the White House said in a fact sheet titled 'ending the
economic harm caused by our immigration system'.
Later in the evening, Trump called for ending the visa
lottery system.
"Time to end the visa lottery. Congress must secure the
immigration system and protect Americans," he tweeted.
The White House said Trump favoured a merit-based
immigration system, which attracts the best and the brightest
from across the world.
"I think the president wants to see legal immigration
reform. He wants to see us move from a process that currently
exists in law of extended family chain migration toward
merit-based immigration reforms," White House Deputy Press
Secretary Raj Shah told reporters during his first ever White
House press conference.
He said the Trump administration wanted to ensure that
people coming into the country are the best and the brightest,
regardless of nationality, creed, religion, or anything else
in between.
"We want to look at the educational backgrounds, ability
to contribute to the workforce in a way that helps American
workers. So the president wants to see reforms that improve
America's economy," Shah said.
According to Senate Republican Policy Committee, every
year the US on an average allocates some 50,000 green cards
through lottery for people from countries who do not get an
opportunity to come to the US through the merit-based
employment visas.
PTI
