SAN FRANCISCO—When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate program in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.
He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as engineer at a data science in Silicon Valley.
But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1-B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.
“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards.
Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1-B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.
