Record number of Indian nationals got green cards in 2005: CSIS

Washington, June 11: A record number of 84,681 Indians got green cards last year which entitled them to become permanent residents in the United States.

According to a data released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (CSIS), of the total number of 1,22,373 green cards issued last year, the maximum 161,445 went to the natives of Mexico. India secured second position with 84,681 followed by China with 69,967.

The number of Indian immigrants in 2003 was 50,228 which increased to 70,151 in the following year. In 2005, 84,681 people got green cards showing a consistent increase in the number of Indian nationals willing to settle down in the United States.

Most of them could opt for becoming US citizens after the required five years of permanent residency.

According to CSIS sources, the largest number of green card applications pending clearance are in India, ''most of whom have been sponsored under the family relationship category''.

The drastic increase in Indians gaining permanent residency in the United States in the past two years is due to migration through employment. Most of them are software professionals who came on a worker visa like H1-B and then went through the skilled category of employees to get green cards.

The United States issues green cards based on family relationship, employment preferences and asylum seekers.

Professionals with advanced degrees, priority workers (those who are recruited by US companies), skilled workers and aliens of exceptional ability constitute the professional category.

Under the employment category India again claimed the largest number of green cards last year due to the large number of software professionals who had migrated to the United States in search of jobs in the 90s.

Of a total of 246,877 green cards issued under the employment category, India claimed the largest 43,211 followed by Phillippines with 16,737, Mexico 15,597, Korea 15,130 and the United Kingdom 11,950. According to the CSIS sources California was the destination of one fifth of the people who became Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) or green-card holders. It was followed by New York/New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Chicago, Illinois and the greater Washington area, comprising Virginia, Maryland and Washingotn DC.

Roughly these states represented the residence of 62 per cent of new LPRs. This also means that computer-related jobs are mostly concentrated in these states as well as the greater Washington area which is home to a large number of IT firms.

Accordingly, a large number of Indian IT professionals live in these states. Their presence sparked a boom in other businesses.

Indian restaurants, Indian grocery stores and other speciality stores that sell herbal and Ayurvedic products as well as all kinds of oils for massage multiplied bringing in a new set of Indian nationals, who too applied for a green card and stayed on as permanent residents.

Indian migration to the United States is nothing new but the category of workers migrating changed over the decades to fill the job requirements here. In the 1950s and 60s, there was a great demand for doctors. According to Dr Navin Shah, a well-known urologist in Maryland, he was not only given a visa and a plane ticket, but was also received at the airport and given VIP treatment. This was in the 1950s. Then came a wave of engineers, agriculture scientists and micro-biologists.

In the 1990s, it was the IT and software professionals, mainly from India, who were most sought after. Highly skilled professionals could quote the salary they wanted. Soon after the interview process was over and a letter of appointment was issued, a company representative would send wine, flowers, cookies/cakes to the delight of the newly recruited Indian employee. Those were in the heydays of the advent of the dotcoms. Outsourcing of jobs overseas has somewhat dampened their prospects in the 2000s.

The CSIS data also showed in all ten countries, Mexico, India, China, Philippines, Cuba, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Korea, Colombia and Ukraine accounted for fifty per cent of all the green cards issued in 2005.

The figures for green cards for Pakistani nationals in 2005 was 14,926 followed by Sri Lanka 11,894, Bangladesh 11,487, Nepal 63 and Maldives six.

UNI