In the wake of the growing clamour from high-skilled immigrants, predominantly from India, for faster Green Cards for permanent residency, the White House has held out the assurance that President Trump’s immigration framework will help reduce the current huge backlog on this score.
“President Trump’s (immigration) framework would end the visa lottery programme and reallocate some of the visas to help reduce backlog of high-skilled, employment-based immigrant cases,” an official factsheet said on Thursday, days after Indian high-skilled immigrants rallied in front of White House in support of Trump’s merit-based immigration push.
The United States grants up to 50,000 visas each year through the visa lottery programme, which has only a few educational and skill requirements, it said, suggesting that some of these visas could be reallocated for high-skilled immigrants. Noting that more than two-thirds of the current legal immigrant admissions are based on family relations rather than merit or skill, the White House factsheet said that Trump’s framework would curb the flow of low-skilled workers into the U.S. by ending extended-family chain migration, while still protecting the nuclear family.
“Our immigration system’s prioritisation of family relations over merit, education level, or skill has allowed a wave of low-skilled labor into our country,” it noted.
“It is time to create a merit-based immigration system that makes sense for a modern economy — selecting new arrivals based on their ability to support themselves financially and to make positive contributions to U.S society,” Trump had said in his recent State of the Union address.
Discussing the influx of low-skilled workers either through family-based immigration or illegally through a porous southern border, the factsheet said that as of 2015, a majority of immigrants in the US over the age of 25 only had a high school education or less.