Washington: Several hundred highly-skilled Indian workers, in long agonising green card wait, from across the US along with their children and spouses held a rally in front of the White House here in support of President Donald Trump's plan for a merit-based immigration system that among other things ends chain migration and diversity lottery visa.
Flying to the US capital from as far as California, Texas and Chicago and driving several hundred miles from places like Florida, New York and Massachusetts, these highly skilled Indians, living in the US for the past several years and in many cases for more than a decade, urged Trump to end the per-country limit on legal permanent residency so as to eliminate the massive Green Card backlog of highly skilled Indians.
"We are looking strictly for a merit-based immigration. That will bring prosperity and fast economic growth of the US," Krishna Bansal, national policy and political director of Republican Hindu Coalition, told the rally of highly skilled Indians, who want to make the US now their permanent home. "We are with President Trump for taking initiative towards a merit-based immigration system," Bansal said, adding that his group is working with the White House and lawmakers towards a comprehensive immigration bill that should include all these things.
Giving green cards to thousands of highly skilled professionals from India would help them realise their full potential and boost country's growth and prosperity, he said. The participants, many of them software engineers, at the rally on Saturday had banner and posters with slogans like 'Cut Green Card backlog', 'strictly merit-based point system', 'end country limit', 'we need to support legal dreamers', and 'We support Trump.'
This was one of the rare pro-Trump immigration rallies at the White House.