California
Latest Coverage
See all articles
Indian H-1B holders could benefit from new Green Card bill expanding US PR pathways – Here’s how
Who would be impacted if the US bill is passed?
Since US President Donald Trump’s return to office last year, several visa policy revisions and measures to overhaul the H-1B visa program—which Indians have dominated in recent years—have severely impacted immigrants hoping to realise their ‘American Dream’ in the US. The nation has seen a drastic rise in anti-Indian sentiment, with even Indian American officials from the MAGA camp like FBI Director Kash Patel and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley becoming prominent targets, amid the Republican president’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
In a single fiscal year, only 85,000 H-1B visas are approved. Although recent years’ official US government data shows that more than 70% of those greenlit applications have belonged to Indian nationals, other figures indicated that it necessarily ease their path to attaining permanent residence in America.
The overall expanding backlog further threatens their chances of obtaining PR as these professionals and their dependents could end up facing a decades-long wait. Based on a cap set by US Congress in 1990, only 140,000 employment-based Green Cards can be issued each year (including dependents). On top of that, 7% per-country caps on Green Cards are only exacerbating these delays.
According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, over 1.2 million Indians are stuck while facing a ruthless backlog for employment-based Green Cards.
What Padilla calls a “long overdue update,” could provide a US Green Card pathway to more than 8 million people, including ‘Dreamers’ (undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children), Temporary Protected Status holders who were forcibly displaced from their countries of origin, children of long-term visa holders, essential workers and highly skilled workers, such as H-1B visa holders, whose prolonged wait for a Green Card to become available continues to stretch into the unknown.
Issuing a formal statement to back the effort once again, the US senator said, “A year ago, I introduced this bill to push back against the Trump Administration’s cruel treatment of hardworking immigrants.”
“Since then, President Trump’s campaign of fear has only escalated, with families living under constant uncertainty despite having built their lives in this country. Congress cannot continue to ignore millions of long-term residents who contribute to our economy and communities every day. It’s past time to modernize our immigration laws and create a fair pathway to lawful permanent residency.”
What is the new pro-Green Card bill about?
According to Padilla’s official senate website page, Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 aims to update the existing Registry provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act by adjusting Registry date to meet current circumstances so that a foreign national may qualify to apply for lawful permanent resident status as long as they have lived in the US continuously for at least seven years before filing an application, have a clean slate with no criminal record and meet all other Green Card requirement.
First codified in 1929, Section 249 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, aka the Registry, allows the Secretary of Homeland Security the discretion to register certain people for lawful permanent resident status if they have been in the US since a certain date and meet other eligibility requirements.
As a result, the bill introduced by Padilla would:
Make changes to the existing Registry statute by moving the eligibility cutoff date so that an immigrant may qualify for lawful PR status if they have been in the US for at least seven years before filing an application under Registry.
Preempt the need for further congressional action by making the eligibility cutoff rolling, instead of tying it to a specific date, as it is now.
The US senator’s renewed push for the bill, especially for immigrants with no criminal record, comes shortly after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released new data showing that more than 43,000 people were booked into immigration detention in June, making for the highest monthly figure since Trump returned to office.
As of July 11, 2026, 46,436 out of 65,765—or 70.6%- of current detainees in ICE custody have no criminal convictions, according to Syracuse University’s data project Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse’s (TRAC) immigration tracker.