Biden wants green card applications done within 6 months

This article was last updated on May 20, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

A US presidential advisory commission voted unanimously to suggest that President Joe Biden process all applications for green card or permanent residency within six months.

The recommendations of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (PACAANHPI), which are now being sent to the White House for approval, are likely to make tens of thousands of Indian-Americans and others who have been waiting, in some cases for decades, for a Green Card happy.

Ajay Jain Bhutoria, a well-known leader in the Indian-American community, brought up this idea at a meeting of the PACAANHPI, where all 25 commissioners unanimously agreed with it.

To reduce the backlog of pending green card, the advisory committee suggested that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) review their processes, systems, and policies and set new internal cycle time goals by streamlining processes, getting rid of any unnecessary steps, automating any manual approvals, improving their internal dashboards and reporting system, and enhancing policies.

The goal of the recommendations is to reduce the amount of time it takes to process all forms related to family-based green card applications, DACA renewals, and all other green card applications to less than six months and to make decisions on the applications within six months of receiving them.

The commission suggested that the National Visa Center (NVC), which is part of the State Department, hire more officers to increase the number of interviews for green cards applications by 100% in three months, starting in August 2022. By April 2023, the number of interviews for green card applications and decisions on them should have gone up by 150%, from 32,439 in April 2022 to a total of 42,050. “Thereafter, Green Card visa interviews and visa processing should take no more than six months,” it said.

In fiscal year 2021, only 65,452 family preference green cards out of a total of 226,000 green cards were given out.