"The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country."
The current system is unfair to Indians and Chinese, so they are trying to fix that with the bill. At the same time, they put in that text to make it so that people from other countries who are already in the queue are not adversely affected, so it eases in the transition over two years so that people from other countries applying in the next few months don't have to wait for decades.
Currently the limit is 7% per country, as described in the second paragraph of tfa. If 85% is a "blatant move to block" people from those countries, how would you describe 7%?
The motive is to level the playing field so to say. China and India have the largest populations. India (and US) staffing companies have been abusing the Visa system and the eager Visa applicants for some time. I’ve personally seen it with IT Contractors getting pointless mail order Masters just to meet the Visa requirement.
I do not see this as part of the ongoing China/US trade “issues”.
That is a welcome change.