Faster family unification through V Visa

United States, 14th December: Reinstatement of US V Visa would facilitate in faster reunification of immigrant families in the US.

Reinstating US V visas--Every year, a large number US legal permanent residents have to face long separation from their family members and this can be as long as decades together. The number of US visas set aside to help reunification of families of non- US citizens is 226,000 each year.

However, despite this, the waiting list of family members of legal US permanent residents is said to be around 839,755 including children and spouses of US permanent residents.

And this is a severe breach of values of inclusiveness and diversity of the US calling for immediate reforms in the US immigration system to expedite reunification of immigrant families in the US.

What is V Visa—V Visa was created in the year 2000 by Congress through Legal Immigration Family Equity Act.

According to this US immigration act, immediate relatives of US permanent residents including spouse and children waiting in the backlog for three years or higher were allowed to come to the US and rejoin their families while awaiting their US permanent visas.

Reinstating US V visas would be a much appreciated step for faster reunification of immigrant families in the US.

But, due to inclusion of a special provision to Legal Immigration Family Equity Act by the Congress, only a few immigrants are eligible to come to the US on V Visas.

As per the sunset provision, to gain eligibility for the V Visa, any petition for getting a Family visa needs to have been made on or before 21st December 2000.

And this has made things worse for those awaiting unification with their families in the US. Meanwhile, Congress has been working to reduce the long backlogs.

This includes introduction of H.R 3012(High Skilled Immigrants Act) recently. Aim of this act is to remove all per-nation annual quotas on US work visas along with increasing the per-nation annual limits for US family visas to 15 percent from the current 7 percent.

However, still, all this does not seem to solve the problem of long waiting times for getting US visas. And this is of utmost concern keeping in view the contribution of immigrant families to the US economy.