US House passes bill removing country cap on Green Card

Agencies
July 11, 2019

Washington, Jul 11: The US lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at lifting the present seven per cent country-cap on issuing Green Cards, a move which would benefit thousands of highly-skilled Indian IT professionals.

A Green Card allows a person to live and work permanently in the US.

Passed by the US House of Representatives, the bill, on being signed into law, would considerably shorten the agonising wait of talented professionals from countries like India who have applied for permanent residency in the United States.

Indian IT professionals, most of whom are highly skilled and come to the US mainly on the 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 the coveted Green Cards or permanent legal residency.

Lifting the per-country cap would mainly benefit professionals from countries like India, for whom the wait for Green Card is more than a decade.

Some of the recent studies have said the waiting period for Indian IT professionals on H-1B visas is more than 70 years.

No more than seven per cent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), this bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from seven per cent of the total number of such visas available that year to 15 per cent and eliminates the seven per cent cap for employment-based immigrant visas.

It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.

The bill, however, has to be passed by the Senate, wherein the Republicans enjoy a majority, before it can be signed into law by President Donald Trump.

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News Network
May 28,2020

May 28: Boeing is cutting more than 12,000 jobs through layoffs and buyouts as the coronavirus pandemic seizes the travel industry, and more cuts are coming.

One of the nation's biggest manufacturers will lay off 6,770 U.S. employees this week, and another 5,520 workers are taking buyout offers to leave voluntarily in the coming wee

Air travel within the U.S. tumbled 96% by mid-April, to fewer than 100,000 people on some days. It has recovered slightly. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 264,843 people at airports on Tuesday, a drop of 89% compared with the same Tuesday a year ago.

Boeing had said it would cut 10% of a work force that numbered about 160,000. A Boeing spokesperson said Wednesday's actions represent the largest number of job cuts, but several thousand additional jobs will be eliminated in the next few months.

The layoffs are expected to be concentrated in the Seattle area, home to Boeing's commercial-airplanes business. The defense and space division is stable and will help blunt the impact of the decline in air travel and demand for passenger jets, the company said.

Boeing said additional job cuts will be made in international locations, but it did not specify numbers.

"The COVID-19 pandemic's devastating impact on the airline industry means a deep cut in the number of commercial jets and services our customers will need over the next few years, which in turn means fewer jobs on our lines and in our offices," CEO David Calhoun said Wednesday in a memo to employees.

Calhoun said the company faces the challenges of keeping employees safe and working with suppliers and airlines "to assure the traveling public that it can fly safe from infection."

Calhoun warned that Boeing will have to adjust business plans constantly because the pandemic makes it hard to predict the impact on the company's business.

Boeing's crisis began with two crashes of its 737 Max, which led regulators around the world to ground the jetliner last year. The company's problems have deepened with the coronavirus, which has cut global air traffic by up to 90% and caused airlines to postpone or cancel orders and deliveries for new planes.

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News Network
January 30,2020

New York, Jan 30: Three Indian citizens were arrested by border patrol agents here for entering the US illegally.

US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle near Massena in New York state along the county's northern border on January 24. During the vehicle checking, the agents found that two of the passengers were Indian citizens who entered the US illegally and not at a designated port of entry.

Both the passengers were transported to the Border Patrol Station for processing and charged.

The vehicle driver, also an Indian citizen who originally entered illegally into the US in 2012 and was ordered removed from the country in absentia last December, was charged with alien smuggling, a felony, which carries a penalty of a fine and up to five years of imprisonment for each violation.

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News Network
May 22,2020

Mumbai, May 22: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday reduced repo rate by 40 basis points to 4 per cent in an effort to further boost liquidity in the economy which has been reeling under the impact of COVID-19 induced countrywide lockdown.

As a result, the reverse repo rate stands at 3.35 per cent, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das. The six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) voted 5:1 in favour of the decision.

Repo rate is the rate at which a country's central bank lends money to commercial banks, and the reverse repo rate is the rate at which it borrows from them. 

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