Thread by @opinion

There are roughly a million qualified immigrant workers waiting to get visas to work in the United States.

About 80,000 green cards will go to waste if Congress doesn’t act soon trib.al/yeaVAIa

The Biden administration has acknowledged that in the last fiscal year, the U.S. failed to issue green cards to legal immigrant workers.

The shortfall adds to a backlog of more than 1 million people waiting to receive employment-based visas trib.al/yeaVAIa

Congress should ensure those green cards are used. The Biden administration should also create a streamlined approval process for immigrants.

This means, among other things, upgrading technology to allow applicants to file paperwork online trib.al/yeaVAIa

The closure of immigration offices during Covid, along with restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, caused the number of family-preference green cards to plunge in 2020.

Then, 122,000 additional employment-based green cards became available trib.al/yeaVAIa

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was unprepared to handle the surge in demand for green cards.

Despite a late push by the Biden administration, the agency fell well short of awarding the full quota by the Sept. 30 deadline trib.al/yeaVAIa

Even when the system runs as intended, hundreds of thousands of skilled and legally employed workers are left in limbo.

On average, highly educated immigrants who’ve qualified for green cards can expect to wait 16 years before actually receiving them trib.al/yeaVAIa

🇮🇳Many immigrants from India who’ve been approved for permanent residence in the U.S. won’t ever get a card because of limits on the number issued to any single country trib.al/yeaVAIa

Legislation introduced by two Republicans, Senator Thom Tillis and Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, would authorize the government to “recapture” the expired visas and roll them into next year trib.al/yeaVAIa

The bill has so far failed to gain backing from congressional Democrats, who are seeking to include broader immigration reforms in their $3.5 trillion spending package trib.al/yeaVAIa

Eliminating the visa backlog will eventually require lifting the arbitrary cap on the number of cards issued each year. Broader immigration reform is needed too.

An easy first step is to deliver the cards the government is already authorized to award trib.al/yeaVAIa