United States Merit Based Immigration

As stated by the RAISE Act, the applicants for Merit Based Immigration will have to fulfill certain eligibility requirements to qualify for points and apply. The requirements for this proposed program are as follows:

• Age: The preferred age of the applicant should be between 26 and 30 years old;
• Education: The applicants with U.S STEM Degrees might get priority in this program.
• English Skills: English language skills of the applicant based on the TOEFL or IELTS.
• Remarkable accomplishments: Any remarkable accomplishments of the applicant including winning a Nobel Prize or an Olympic Medal;
• Job Offer: Whether the applicant has a job offer or not and if yes, the annual salary that the applicant will get;
• Investment: Whether the applicant will be investing in the U.S economy by initiating and running a new commercial enterprise;
• Family Based Green Card: Whether the applicant just got approval for a Family Based Green Card right before the RAISE Act was accepted.

If the RAISE Act is officially approved and the U.S government agrees to start giving Merit Based visas instead of DV, then there will be a diverse application process which might not look similar to present immigrant visa processing. USCIS will still be the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, but the procedure will be as follows.

• Step 1: Submit an online application

You must score at least 30 in order to be eligible to apply. You will have to submit an online application to USCIS.

If the RAISE Act is approved, you will have to submit the following major documents which prove you qualify for the points:

• Birth certificate or a government-issued ID documents;
• Your degree certificates and transcripts;
• Official test scores for English skills;
• Extraordinary achievement if applicable;
• job offer letter if applicable; and
• Documents that prove you will start a business activities in the U.S and the investment, if applicable.

• Step 2: USCIS will rank applications

This new program is supposed to be a point based or merit based immigration program which means applications will be ranked according to their points. Applications with higher points are likely to get approved. The following factors will give points to applicants who will submit application at USCIS.

Educational degrees

Your educational degree like Bachelor degree, Diploma, Master’s degree or PhD will make a great impact on your points. But applicants with the U.S. degree will get additional advantages and points.

English Proficiency

The person with a higher language skills will be ranked higher than the one with a lower language skills.

Age

Age is a big skeleton factor. Applicants with appropriate age will get more points.

• Step 3: USCIS will send visa invitations

After ranking the application, USCIS will then send invitations to the highest ranked applicants every 6 months. If you submit your application, you will stay in the applicant pool for 12 months, therefore you have two chances to get invitation from the USCIS.

• Step 4: USCIS will process and announce Merit Based visa winners

After completing the whole process, USCIS will then inform those who got the Merit Based visa.

Since the RAISE Act has not been approved yet, the details of what form you will have to submit are still not known. With this online application form, you will also have to attach the documents which prove you qualify for the points. This includes the following:

• Birth certificate or a government-issued ID documents;
• Your degree certificates and transcripts;
• Official test scores for English skills;
• Extraordinary achievement if applicable;
• job offer letter if applicable; and
• Documents that prove you will start a business activities in the U.S and the investment, if applicable.

In addition, you will also have to pay a $160 application fee for processing. The U.S government maintains the right to change the fees based on inflation. When you submit the application, you will be placed in an applicant pool.

The filing fee for this program is yet to be known from official sources.