 US President Joe Biden's new immigration law and what it means for us Indians. This is what we're going to be talking about in this video. Keep on watching. Hi guys, my name is Shalchi and welcome back to my channel. I'm a travel and visa coach and on this channel, you will find tons of useful videos on the US visa process. So make sure to check them out. Now if you clicked on this video, you would know that Joe Biden officially became the President of the United States. He has taken over the White House office and on his first day at work, he introduced the US immigration bill, which has a lot of people talking. It has a lot of good stuff and this video, we're going to break down this bill and try and understand the implications for us Indians. Now throughout his campaign, Joe Biden has been very pro-immigration. In fact, this is what we predicted on this channel. Couple of months ago, you can check out this video. His entire approach towards immigration has been to reverse the damage done by Trump to modernize the American immigration system and to attract top talent. And this is exactly what this bill aims at doing. So what I'll be doing in this video is to divide this bill into three different categories. So the first category we're going to talk about is immigration. The second category is about the student visa and the last but the most important one we're going to talk about the H1B and the dependent visas. So let's get started. In fact, before we start, I have a bit of a personal update for you. So I was missing an action for about the last two months or so. A lot of you have sent me DMs on Instagram and a lot of you have left comments on YouTube. I haven't responded to any of this. And the reason for that is that we became parents. Me and my husband were blessed with a baby boy on 19th of November. So that is where I've been the last two months. But now I've slowly started getting back to work and getting back to filming videos. So I will be more regular on this channel and also try to respond to all the DMs and the comments. So with that said, let's get started. So the first category we're going to discuss is immigration. And this is the majority of the bill. This is what the bill majorly talks about. Like I said, it is very positive and very pro immigration. So let's discuss the main points under this category. The first one is that the bill aims at providing a roadmap for citizenship to all the undocumented individuals who are in the US. Now the US workforce or rather the country has a lot of individuals who have been living in the US for years. They've been working there. They have families there. But these individuals are undocumented. So what the bill aims at doing is that instead of trying to remove these individuals from the US and ban them, it aims at providing a roadmap to giving them citizenship. And the bill says that they have a timeframe of eight years over which they plan to do this. The second point under immigration is that the bill aims at clearing any backlogs or rather clearing all the backlogs which are there in the immigration system. So the US immigration system has a huge backlog. The waiting time sometimes runs into decades. And due to this, a lot of families are in fact separated because a lot of families are waiting for their citizenship so that they could go join the other people who are already in the US. So the bill says that they're going to clear this backlog and make it easier for families to unite with each other. The third point that the bill talks about is at promoting diversity and removing any discrimination based on religion. So right now there is a travel ban for citizens from certain Muslim countries like Syria, Yemen into the US. So the bill says that all these travel restrictions are of course going to be removed and there will not be any discrimination based on religion when it comes to giving US citizenship. In fact, there is a visa called the diversity visa wherein people from certain religious minority can actually apply and get their visa. And what the bill says is that they're going to increase the quota for this from about 55,000 right now to 80,000. So overall a lot of good stuff when it comes to immigration, they are in fact more points and you know a lot of more nitty gritties. If you're interested in going into details of this, I would recommend this particular video from McBean TV. I'm going to leave the link for that in the description box below. She goes into a lot of details of this bill when it comes to immigration, so do check that out. The second category that we're going to talk about in this video is students. Now in the last year, I think students, people who are on F1, M1 visa and aspirants have been stressed a lot because of all the changes that were being introduced by the Trump administration. So 2020 saw a lot of restrictions being introduced in the student visa category. First Trump tried to ban F1 for people who are doing their course online, then he tried to introduce a time limit to the number of years that you could stay in the US and so on and so forth. And I know that all your students were stressed out because of this. The positive is that Joe Biden again has a very positive approach for students. So the bill essentially says that all these STEM students, basically students under science, technology, engineering and mathematics who are there in the US, it'll become easier for them to complete their education, to work under OPT and finally to get their H1B visas and their green cards. There will not be any time restrictions imposed on them and there will not be any, you know, other bans or restrictions on students under these visas. So overall, this is a huge positive development and of course this should bring relief to all the Indian students who are in the US because you know to go to the US you put in so much effort, you spend so much time and money and then obviously you want some degree of certainty to be there once you complete your education. Now the details of how exactly these changes are going to be implemented, how exactly it will be easier for students to get H1B visas, to get green cards is yet to be released. The guidelines are yet to be released on this. So stay tuned to this channel and as soon as we have more updates, I will be bringing them right here. Now speaking of student visas, if you are preparing for one and if you're preparing, if you're just getting ready to appear for your F1 interview, I would highly recommend you to check out this course. This is a F1 visa course. A lot of our viewers and students have taken this course prepared for the interview and you know have gone on to clear it. So you too can check it out and I'm sure it's going to help you. Again the link for this is in the description box below. The third and the most important category is the H1B category and their dependence. Now again 2020 saw a lot of stressful situations created for the H1B visa aspirants and holders. So much of uncertainty was there. Thankfully this should slowly come to an end and more and more clarity is being given out by the Joe administration on what will happen to people who are on H1B visas and you know on their dependence as well. So the first thing that he says is that he will aim at clearing all these green card backlogs in the employment based category. So again people who are on H1B visas and who applied for green card, there is a huge backlog. It runs up to 10 to 12 years sometimes and the reason for that is that if you're on H1B and you apply for a green card, there is a quota system which is a country-wise quota system and since there's a huge chunk of Indians who are there on H1B visas, it is estimated that there are about 8 lakh Indians who are in the US on H1B visas. Getting through this quota system takes years. Like I said it takes 10 to 15 years sometimes. So what the administration is saying is that they're going to remove this quota which is based on country and make it more of a merit-based system where green cards would be allotted to people based on number of years they have been working there and you know depending upon the jobs that they have. So this is a huge positive. The second positive that we see here is for the dependents. Now this Bill also says that the dependents of H1B visas will be allowed to work in the US. There will not be any work restrictions on them. It also protects children who are aging out. So if a child is aging out crossing the age of 21 years because of the weight in getting the green card, they will be protected and they will not be allowed to age out. So a positive development for dependents of H1B visas as well. Next there's an update on how the H1B visa is going to be allotted. So till now H1B visa was allotted on a lottery system. It was basically by chance it was a lottery and if your name came up in the lottery you would be you know allotted a H1B visa. Now Trump put an end to that and said that H1B visas would be more of a wage-based visas where people with obviously higher wages would be given preference. The second thing that Trump did was that he also said that to qualify for H1B visas there would be a certain wage hike that would be essential. Now both these two things that is the wage hike and also how the H1B visas are going to be allotted have been put on hold for 60 days. We still do not know whether the lottery system will come back or whether Biden will continue with the wage-based system for alloting the H1B visas. So again any update on this I will be bringing it on this channel so stay tuned for that. The last update when it comes to the H1B category is that Trump administration basically introduced a new norm where in H1B visas would have to be applied by both the employer as well as the client. Now what this means is that suppose you work for TCS till now it was enough if TCS applied and you know initiated your H1B visas whereas Trump administration said that no H1B visa would have to be initiated both by the employer that is the TCS and the client that is the company that you are going to be working for and this of course made the system much more complicated. Now this again has been put on hold and it is very unlikely that this will be implemented so we can safely assume that the employer client system for giving the H1B visas will be scrapped. So these are all the updates when it comes to the immigration bill so like I said overall it's definitely more positive and good things can be expected but again the implementation timeline and the roadmap is yet to be released how these changes are going to be implemented is yet to be clarified so we need to watch out for that and I will be keeping a close watch on that and bringing all the updates on this channel. Apart from this in other news the US embassies in India have finally started accepting appointments for B1B2 visas so I know a lot of you have been waiting for the last six to seven months to get an appointment for B1B2 visas. The US embassies particularly the New Delhi one has finally issued an update saying that from FEP they're going to be accepting applicants for B1B2 visa so if you've been waiting for that do check for appointments. The other embassies in India are expected to also start the B1B2 visa processing in the month of FEP and March. So if you are going to be appearing for the B1B2 visas make sure that you check out the other videos on this channel I'm sure they'll help you and if you need more in-depth preparation then do check out these two courses. This is the one on filling DS160 form and this is the one on appearing and clearing your visa interview. Currently I am not accepting one-to-one consultation calls because of time restrictions so if you need my help in preparing and clearing the visa interview do check out these two courses so that's all for this video keep a close watch on this channel in the coming weeks because any new update when it comes to all these visa regulations and also their implementation I'm going to be tracking them and bringing them here and before I end I have another personal update so I have one more YouTube channel yes apart from this I have started another YouTube channel this is more of my personal blog it's a pregnancy and baby care guide for Indian women so do check it out and if you know women who would be interested in this content it's basically for us Indian women you know this is me sharing my personal journey of pregnancy and motherhood please do recommend this channel to them it really helped me out thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next one signing off till then bye