Around 30 Indian-origin tech immigrants marched in San Jose on Sunday, demanding immigration reform that will allow them to stay back in the United States after many years of waiting for the elusive ‘Green Card’. The report was aired by CBS News.
According to CBS News, which reported on the march first, some of the marchers have already been living in the US for decades. They were recruited from India to work in the Silicon Valley tech industry using H-1B visas.
The H-1B is a visa under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H) that allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.
A specialty occupation requires the application of specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent of work experience.
The duration of stay is three years, extendable to six years; after which the visa holder may need to reapply. Laws limit the number of H-1B visas that are issued each year: 188,100 new and initial H-1B visas were issued in 2019. Employers must generally withhold Social Security and Medicare taxes from the wages paid to employees in H-1B status.
Once in the US, immigrants on an H-1B visa automatically qualify for a green card, which gives them residency status, but not citizenship. But Indian tech migrants have always faced a backlog, which now, according to Akhilesh Malavalli — an H-1B visa holder quoted by CBS News — has gone up to 150 years.
“We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card,” Malavalli told John Ramos of CBS News. “A hundred fifty years! I’ll be dead. I’ll be dead by the time we see a green card.”
CBS News said there is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible.
The latest protest was conducted in front of the San Jose home of congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, demanding that she fulfil a promise to bring a bill to the House floor for a vote.
HR 3648 aims to remove national origin as a consideration for getting a skilled-worker green card.
Malavalli told CBS News: “What we are fighting for is basic equality. Treat us based on what skills we bring to this nation and not necessarily based on where we were born.”
The protest, the marchers said, was necessitated because of a series of layoffs in Silicon Valley. Migrants on the H-1B visa have to find a new job within 60 days of losing the first in order to be eligible to stay back in the US. In case they don’t, they risk deportation back to their home country.
Many of the migrants who have lost their jobs, have families in the US. Their children are born in the US, and are therefore American citizens.
CBS News quoted Prashant Prasad as saying, “You know, there will be layoffs and suddenly you’re lost. You have 60 days to find another job and stay in the US. Otherwise you become illegal.”
According to the report, even if they maintain their jobs, under H-1B, children of workers must leave the country when they turn 21 even if they’ve lived here their entire lives. Unlike green-card status — which also covers dependents — if an H1B worker should die, their entire family must leave the country.
CBS News said that Representative Lofgren is the lead sponsor of the HR 3648 and chair of the House subcommittee on immigration. The protesters said they want her to bring the bill up for a vote in the coming week.
Indian tech immigrants protest in San Jose, CBS News reports
