Big Changes to US Green Card Program and US Immigration Regulations
Yesterday the US President announced big changes to the American immigration regulations aiming to improve the border control and help local economy. The plan is to stop not qualified foreigners coming to USA and attract only highly qualified and skilled immigration. This way the US economy will be in better position and be more competitive.
The changes announced are mainly aiming the US Green card program which give chance to many non Americans to immigrate to USA live, work and study there. The Green card is also a shortcut to the US Citizenship. The plan is to reduce the quota by 50%.
The new Green Card regulations will be point based system which should evaluate the skills, experience, qualifications of the applicant. The new approach will also assess the English speaking level of an applicant as well as weather that person would be able to afford a healthcare and to support himself in USA. Important to mention is also the intention of the new approach to reduce the number of family members that can join the Green card holder to only spouse and minor children. The way the authorities will concentrate more on the qualified and skilled people and give way less Green cards to a large number of family members as it used to be the case.
The new immigration approach is aiming to decrease the number of refugees and immigrants from countries with low immigration rate. Combined all those changes are going to be the biggest changes in immigration regulations for the last 50 years as the announcement states.
From the beginning of its presidency the US President made several significant changes to the US border control and visa programs. As you know in the beginning of the year changes were announced about the H-1B visa program and the visa ban for 7 countries also earlier this year