Indian workers may have to wait up to 134 years to get a Green Card.
Indian workers may have to wait up to 134 years to get a Green Card.
According to a new study by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, there is a 134-year wait for the employment-based green card for over 400,000 Indian employees in the United States.
The annual quota on employment-based visas set by the U.S. government at 140,000 and the 7% per-country restriction have resulted in a backlog of 1.8 million cases, of which 1.1 million are from India.
80,324 employment-based petitions with 171,635 applicants—including spouses and minor children—were backlogged as of March 2023. In addition, 289,000 people were in the process of changing their status, and 1.3 million people were added to a waiting list. The State Department has not published the precise number of employment-based immigrants who were waiting for their visas to be processed at foreign consulates and embassies. Multiple applications submitted on behalf of the same person, claims Cato, may cause some overlap in the backlog.
Most backlogged cases belong to the EB-2 category, which is reserved for workers with advanced degrees. Another 19% of employees with a bachelor’s degree fall under the EB-3 category. About 13% of cases fall under the EB-4 category, which also includes “special immigrants” like interpreters from Afghanistan and Iraq, while EB-5 significant investors account for 6% of instances.
An overwhelming majority of the backlog, approximately 1.1 million out of 1.8 million cases, is from India (63%), while nearly 250,000 cases hail from China (14%). Nearly 10% of the total contribution comes from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, primarily under the EB-4 special immigrant category. With an astounding 134-year wait, the backlog in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories basically amounts to a life sentence for new applicants from India. Cato predicts that while waiting for their green cards, some 424,000 employment-based candidates will pass away.M-J Global is the best visa agent in Dubai,Oman and Qatar and best immigration consultant in Oman,Dubai and Qatar.It is the most trusted immigration agency in middle east and the business migration agent in Oman,Dubai and Qatar.
