Issue 776 (36)
19 - 25 June, 2018
151 years is how long the wait might be for a US Green Card AFTER the projection by a think tank that says Indians with advanced degrees may have to wait for more than 150 years for a Green Card, which authorises them to live and work in the US permanently, Indians willing to settle down there are a worried lot. “At current rates of visa issuances, they will have to wait 151 years for a green card. Obviously, unless the law changes, they would have died or left by that point,” news agency PTI quoted the Cato Institute. Cato Institute recently made these calculations based on the number of Green Cards issued in 2017, after the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) put out data on the number of applications they have received for the legal permanent residency cards. Yashaswi Mathur, who had plans to settle down in the US after the completion of her postgraduation from a US university, is now anxious about not getting a permanent residency card. “I wanted my parents to shift with me as I already got a good job at a chemical engineering firm,” she told Mail Today. Shashi Kishor shares her concern. “Having worked in the US for three years and now working in India, I planned to return to the US for a longer period. However, such a long waitlist for Green Card may spoil my future plans,” said Shashi, currently residing in Delhi. Explaining the nuances of the Green Card, Nrusimha Misra, based in Iowa in the US, said, “For professionals who plan to go and work in the US for a certain period and come back to
India, this is not going to be a problem. But for those who intend to settle in the US, such a long waiting period for the Green Card is a bad news. This is more worrying for the EB-2 category under which maximum professionals apply for jobs in the US.” As of April 20, 2018, as many as 6,32,219 Indians with their spouses and minor children were in the waiting line for the Green Card. The shortest wait is for the highest skilled category for EB-1 (employment based) immigrants with ‘extraordinary ability’. The waiting period for these applicants will be ‘only’ six years, the Cato Institute said in its latest report. According to USCIS, there are as many as 34,824 Indian applicants under the EB-1 category. Along with 48,754 spouses and children. 83,578 Indians are in line for the visa cards under EB-1 category. The EB-3 applicants — those with bachelor’s degrees— might have to wait for almost 17 years, the report said. As of April 20th,
there were 54,892 Indians in this category. Clubbed with 60,381
spouses and children, the total number of applicants waiting for
green card in EB-3 category goes up to 1,15,273. However, the biggest backlog is for EB-2 workers, who have advanced degrees. According to the USCIS, there were 2,16,684 primary Indian applicants under EB-2 category and 2,16,684 spouses and children, thus making a total of 4,33,368. This is primarily because of the existing laws which impose per-country-limit of seven per cent. Overall 3,06,400 primary Indian applicants are waiting for their Green Cards. Clubbed with their spouses and
children numbering 3,25,819, as many as 632,219 Indians in all are waiting for their cards. In 2017, only 22,602 applicants from India were issued the legal permanent residency cards. Of these, 13,082 were in the EB-1 category, 2,879 in EB-2 category and 6,641 in EB-3 category, according to the latest USCIS figures. The think tank said that the green card allocation is not based on the backlog, so 69 per cent of the backlog is in the EB2 category, but it received only 13 per cent of the Green Cards issued in 2017.
British royals get ready for family’s first gay wedding TWO YEARS ago Lord Ivar Mountbatten, son of the 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven and cousin to the Queen created quite a stir when he confessed to having struggled with his sexuality throughout most of that 16- year-marriage. Finally, he admitted he was gay after finding contentment with his new love James Coyle, whom he met in the swish Swiss ski resort of Verbier. Later this summer, the two men will marry in the private chapel on his magnificent country estate in Devon. It will be the first ever same-sex marriage in the extended Royal Family. For the sake of their daughters, Ella, 22, Alix, 20, and 15-year-old Luli, Lord Ivar, his former wife Penny and fiancee James, who now considers the girls to be his children, too, want the announcement to be handled with dignity. “This is why we are all here in this, shall we say,
rather unconventional family’s Grade I listed home near the village of Uffculme in Devon. We really are a funny threesome,” says Lord Ivar. He knows he is enormously fortunate in the way life has turned out for him and his family. For not only is Penny, from whom he was divorced eight years ago, incredibly supportive of the union, but she is actually going to give her former husband away at the ceremony. “It was the girls’ idea,” says Penny in her first interview on this most sensitive of subjects. “It makes me feel quite emotional. I’m really very touched.” Touched? Many women would be trashing the family pile. Penny is the sort of attractive, sparky woman that most redblooded males would be falling
over themselves to whisk up the aisle. Isn’t it, well, a little odd to be handing over the husband she once loved with all her heart to another man? “Not at all. You and I have got on from the first
10 seconds of meeting each other, haven’t we?” she says to James, the man who is due to become her former husband’s husband. “What I don’t think Ivar realises is how much he has changed as a man since he ‘came out. James is hugely responsible for that because he’s so much fun.” “Ivar is so much
more relaxed these days. He’s so much kinder. He’s become a great cook. I now call him Fanny Cradock. He probably wasn’t even aware that by keeping his sexuality a secret it was really quite tormenting him. Now it’s ‘out’ he’s a completely different person. Everybody says they’ve never seen him happier.” This impending marriage, indeed, has the full blessing of their extended family and those closest to them, including Lord Ivar’s lifelong friend Prince Edward, to whose eldest child he is a godparent. The Earl and Countess of Wessex are also godparents to his two eldest daughters. “Sophie and Edward know our plans and are really excited for us,” says Lord Ivar. “Sadly they can’t come to the wedding. Their diaries are arranged months in advance and they’re
not around, but they adore James. Everyone adores him.” “All my good friends have accepted James. I basically told everyone: ‘I’ve found somebody — it’s a bloke.” They just started laughing. Then they met James and one particular mate said, “If I was gay, I’d certainly go for him.” “Growing up in Glasgow was challenging for James. He once overheard his father, who was a strict Catholic, calling him ‘the queer one’. He wondered who he was referring to.” “I loved Penny when we were married, as I still do, and I loved our family unit. I never thought this would happen. I never thought I’d marry a man,” Ivar said. “I knew from the age of eight I was more attracted to men. Finally I am able to love myself and the reason this marriage is acceptable to all of us is because of James character, the nature of the beast — the gorgeous beast.”