What’s Happening

On the evening of December 2nd, 2020, The United States Senate passed an amended version of S.386/H.R.1044, otherwise known as the “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act”. This development is the latest step in a decades-long debate over the removal of numerical limits currently in place that cap the number of employment based immigrant visas (“green cards”) nationals of any specific country can be granted in a given fiscal year. These caps have long been problematic as they have resulted in significant wait times for green card applicants born in India and China due to high volume of applications filed by nationals of those countries each year and the finite availability of employment based green cards per year. Some projections put the current wait times for Indian and Chinese born nationals to obtain green cards as being longer than 50 years in some instances over 100 years (whereas the wait for someone born in nearby Bangladesh or Japan could be as little as 1 year for the same benefit).

The House version of the bill, initially passed on July 10, 2019, has been significantly amended by the Senate and will have to be reviewed and approved again by the House in its amended form in order to be presented to the executive branch for Presidential approval.