Washington: Nearly one lakh employment-based Green Cards of Indian IT professionals will be wasted in less than two months. 

IT professionals are waiting for legal permanent residency now runs into decades. Under existing law, if the US declines to issue visas by September 30, IT professionals will lose it forever. 

The quota for employment-based immigrants is 261,500, far higher than the usual 140,000,. The current pace of processing by US Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS suggests they will waste more than 100,000 Green Cards, a fact recently confirmed by the Department of State officer in charge of determining visa usage, PTI reported.

Green Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of residing permanently in the US.

If the USCIS or the Biden administration doesn't take any steps, the extra 100,000 Green Cards that are available this year will be wasted, stated in the report. 

Hundreds of thousands of gainfully employed legal immigrants in the US would benefit from these Green Cards. Many of them have been waiting for a decade or more to adjust to permanent resident status but have been unable to do so due to a lack of available visa numbers, reports says.