US Congress : Prominent U.S. Senators have unveiled a new legislative proposal aimed at eliminating country-specific quotas for green cards and repurposing unused visa slots from the annual Green Card allocation to address the pressing shortage of healthcare professionals in the United States.
US Congress :EAGLE
The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, spearheaded by Senators Kevin Cramer and Dick Durbin, intends to allocate a restricted number of green cards to qualified immigrant doctors and nurses, strategically addressing the acute shortage of healthcare workers.
Senator Cramer and John Hickenlooper are set to reintroduce the Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment (EAGLE) Act, a bill that empowers U.S. employers to make hiring decisions based on immigrants’ qualifications rather than their place of birth.
The proposed legislation aims to eliminate the current seven percent per-country cap on employment-based immigrant visas while simultaneously increasing the cap for family-sponsored visas from seven percent to fifteen percent.
According to Aman Kapoor of Immigration Voice, this legislation shifts the green card allocation system towards a more merit-based approach.
The bill introduces a first-come, first-served application process for employment-based green cards, all the while ensuring that foreign nationals from countries previously accustomed to preferential treatment and virtually no wait times for green card issuance due to discriminatory per-country limits are not unduly disadvantaged.
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