Skilled immigrants in US rally against visa delays

This rally was by skilled immigrants working here on temporary visas who are waiting for years, unable to get their permanent visas. DP

siffy.com: Washington: About 1,000 highly skilled legal immigrants, including many Indians, rallied at Capitol Hill to protest long delays and vast bureaucratic backlogs in the US immigration system, and called for more permanent visas.

On Tuesday, the immigrants, including doctors, medical technicians and computer engineers from India and China, came to Washington from as far as California to participate in the protest rally. They carried placards and wore T-shirts emblazoned with American flags to call on Congress to provide more permanent visas for highly educated immigrants and more resources for the overburdened immigration system.

They said the plight of foreigners living in the US legally had been unfairly eclipsed by the polarised debate over illegal immigration that led to the defeat of an immigration overhaul in June.

The immigrants, who are living in the US on temporary student or high-skilled employment visas, said they were nearing despair with waits lasting as long as a decade to obtain visas giving them permanent residence, known as a green cards, New York Times reported.

Sridhar Narra, an India-born physician who participated in the rally, said his efforts to gain a green card had lasted almost eight years, including a two-year forced separation from his wife, also from India.
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