He says COVID has closed the U.S. consulate so he can no longer get a VISA stamp to fly home.
Vasmi Krishna, an IT staffer at Chase Bank in Columbus, decided to fly home to his native India after learning that his 62-year-old mother was in critical condition with COVID-19.
“My mother became infected with COVID-19. Her health was deteriorating day by day. She got to a point where she couldn’t even speak,” he said.
He flew from Columbus to Guntur on April 16. Despite a U.S. travel ban to India, he said he couldn’t imagine not being there for this mother.
“I thought it would be a good idea for me to take care of her and fly over here, and God knows, in the worst case scenario, if she dies I can’t hear her last words,” he said.
His mother recovered, but COVID devastated the country and closed the U.S. consulate.
India’s virus cases exceeded 25 million cases in total on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Krishna says the US consulate and embassy have closed because of the runaway expansion.
“I should have a visa stamp on my passport to travel to the US,” he said.
He couldn’t leave without the stamp of the consulate.
The other option is to use a dropbox where people can leave their travel documents for review by the US embassy. However, Krishna says that these dates are booked.
The US travel ban exempts HI-B workers like Krishna. This visa allows foreign workers to work temporarily in the United States. However, without a visa stamp, Krishna is stranded.
“There is currently a travel ban that is only allowed to citizens and green card holders,” he said.
Waiting for someone from India to get a green card can take years, says Columbus immigration attorney Sam Shibab.
“I would say 10-12 years is the average for India,” he said.
US immigration policy limits the number of green cards to 7% regardless of a country’s population. India has more than 1.3 billion people.
In 2019, the green card backlog worldwide was 800,000, of which over 60% were Indian.
Around 140,000 immigrant visas under labor law are available to foreign employees as well as their spouses and children per fiscal year.
On December 2, 2020, the U.S. Senate passed the Fairness Act for Highly Skilled Immigrants, including removing the 7% per country cap for green card applicants. That would put an end to the long wait for thousands of green card hopefuls.
However, the legislation in various versions was not passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate and was not brought into line before the end of the 116th session of the Congress.
Krishna said that if he were born in another country he would have his green card by now.
“He has a very good complaint and we have no other answer than to say that we are sorry that our immigration system is broken,” says Shabib.
Krishna has a message for President Joe Biden.
“Mr. President, legal immigrants are ignored as victims. If someone has lived and paid taxes for more than a decade, they shouldn’t be considered a foreigner,” he said.
President Joe Biden’s American Citizenship Act of 2021, which was introduced in Congress in February, would, among other things, provide for the lifting of the country-specific upper limit for employment-related green cards.
