Employment-based Green Card backlog reached a new record of 1.8 million cases this year; of these 1.1 million (63%) are from India
Washington: More than 10.5 lakh Indians are in the queue for an employment-based Green Card and 4 lakh of them may die before they receive the much-sought-after legal document of permanent residency in the US, according to a new study, a PTI report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says
A Green Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants to the US as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of permanent residency
The employment-based Green Card backlog reached a new record of 1.8 million cases this year, according to the study by David J Bier of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank.
About 1.1 million of the 1.8 million cases in the backlog are from India (63 per cent). Another nearly 250,000 are from China (14 per cent), it said.
These astounding backlogs and massive waits underscore that legal immigration to the United States is nearly impossible, says study
The backlog consists of immigrants who are waiting to receive green cards, primarily the result of low Green Card caps for employer-sponsored immigrants and investors.
Because no country may receive more than 7 per cent of the green cards (the country caps) unless they would otherwise go unused, the 1.1 million cases from Indians in the backlog bear most of the burden of the broken system, the study said.
New applicants from India will face a lifetime wait, and more than 400,000 will die before they receive a green card, it said.
The process starts when an employer files a petition for a worker. If no Green Card is available under the caps, the petition is wait-listed until a spot opens. Finally, a worker may file to adjust their status to permanent residence (the green card application) when a green card cap spot is available to them.
There’s a similar staged process for investors and employment-based “special immigrants” who include Afghan interpreters as well as, strangely, abandoned immigrant children.
In March 2023, as many as 80,324 employment-based petitions were pending, representing about 171,635 people with spouses and minor children of the workers included. Another 1.3 million were waitlisted, and 289,000 were pending adjustment of status applications, the study said.
Over half of the backlog is in the EB-2 category for employees of US businesses with advanced degrees.
Another 19 per cent are in the EB-3 category for employees with at least bachelor’s degrees. The EB-4 category for “special immigrants” (Afghan and Iraqi interpreters, others with various US government affiliations, and abandoned children) is about 13 per cent. Another 6 per cent are for EB-5 major investors.
For new applicants from India, the backlog for the EB-2 and EB-3 categories (which are combined because applicants can move between them) is effectively a life sentence: 134 years. About 424,000 employment-based applicants will die waiting, and over 90 per cent of them will be Indians.
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