Now that the elections have made its way, we all know that the United States chose and re-elected Barack Obama to be Mr. President for the next 5 year period. During the elections campaign, there were lots of discussions about the foreign policies. But somehow during the election debate sessions between Obama and Romney, there was not much spoken about either the H-1B’s or the Green Cards. But still since the foreign policies have always been a topic all the time, we could come up with some expectations for the coming years.

What Romney Promised?

Romney has always been in support to increase the number of H-1B visas for those advanced degree holders in Math and Science. Romney’s plan also was to staple green cards for those who would pursue advanced degree graduation in the U.S. These were the two plans set for the foreign graduates by Romney in his election plan. Both of these would have tremendously impacted the foreign graduates in a positive way.

What can we expect from Obama?

We could have the expectation dealt in two categories:

• Possible impact on H-1B
• Possible impact on Green Card

Possible Impact on H-1B

Keeping Romney’s election plans aside, we need to figure out the expectations on what we have for the coming years from Obama. Looks like Obama in his plans definitely proposes to increase the number of H-1B’s. Not sure when this would happen, but looks like it is in his plan.

Possible Impact on Green Card

Obama has always been a proponent for making green cards available to the STEM graduates. But still in the house when republicans bought up a proposal and bought it to vote, this bill failed. It was mentioned in few of the newspapers that this was one of the effort to score political points with the Tech Sector.

Obama has outlined his immigration legislative strategy in the late October in one of his interview and the key excerpt of his proposition is:

“The second thing I’m confident we’ll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they’re going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I’ve cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.”

Immigration Reform Early January?

Obama at the first press conference after winning the re-election has promised to push for a comprehensive reform to fix the broken immigration system by next January. He also stressed that this is the top priority for early 2013.

If Obama still sticks to his plan, we should definitely see some immigration reform favorable to the STEM graduates in terms of green cards and increase in H-1B’s quota sometime in the next few months, unless other issues like to border forces, etc. might keep this aside.

What do you think? Will this happen any time soon. Share your feedback by commenting or writing us to [email protected]