Washington, June 8:  Indians living and working in the United States of America (USA) may have to wait for up to 92 years to get hands on their US Green Card. Yes, you read it right! According to the latest figures released by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Indians account for more than three-fourths, which is 75 per cent of the highly-skilled professionals who are on a long wait to get a legal permanent residence status, i.e. the Green Card, in the US.

According to a report by TOI, India has over 10,000 applicants for the US green card along with China. The USCIS data further shows that as of May 2018, there were 3,95,025 foreign nationals waiting for Green Card under the employment-based preference category of which 3,06,601 were Indians.

According to the current law in the United States, applicants from any one country cannot be granted more than seven per cent of the Green Cards. This law is the one that makes the wait for Indians the longest. According to country limits, an Indian skilled worker may have to wait 25-92 years to get a Green Card, which is the permanent resident card. If you go to calculate, this means that a 22-year old IIT graduate with a dream to work in the US will have to wait for getting a Green Card till he turns 114.

It must be noted that Green Card is a must for US Citizenship and green card holders can legally live and work in the US.  Any disruptive move on the visa front is believed to be detrimental to both India and the US.

According to a report by Nasscom, the use of visas by Indian IT firms has fallen by 50 per cent in the last two years and that the number now stands below 10,000 (of the 85,000 H-1B visas issued annually).

To brace against the impact, Indians IT firms have also been ramping up local recruitments and training manpower in the US. In 2017, about 1.1 million visas were issued to Indian nationals to come to the US in every category and out of these, about 50,000-60,000 were H1B visas.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 08, 2018 04:27 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).