Green Card: Healthcare Workers Protest Outside US Capitol

A group of Indian-American frontline healthcare workers languishing in the GC backlog held a demonstration in front of the US Capitol urging lawmakers to end the per capita country-specific quota.

We are frontline COVID warriors, and we are here to tell how we have been short-changed into a life of perpetual indentured servitude. Each of us has a story. We are here from all over the country asking for justice, Dr Raj Karnatak, infectious disease, and critical care physician, and Dr. Pranav Singh, a pulmonary and critical care physician, said.

We trained in the US and took oath as physicians to serve the sick. We are in a GC backlog due to archaic country caps that allow no country to get more than 7% of employment-based GCs, said the 2 Indian American doctors' organisers of the peaceful protest said in a joint statement.

Many healthcare workers could not serve in COVID-19 hot spots as the visas are tied to the job and employer, they said. The small group of protestors said that President Joe can direct USCIS to end the Green Card backlog for the frontline healthcare workers by utilising the unused green cards in the past years.

There was an HR 1044 fairness bill that was passed in the House of Representatives by 365 votes in 2019 and its senate equivalent S386 passed the Senate in 2020.

Now it is back to House as a modified version. Representative Zoe Lofgren, initial co-sponsor of the bill HR 1044 has not shown any interest in bringing the bill to vote as a bipartisan solution to end the suffering of skilled professionals including frontline healthcare workers, they alleged.