Many expats from top-sending countries still haven't received their Green Card a decade after applying
Mexico, India, China and the Philippines are the countries where most Green Card applicants are from. According to Statistica, in 2021, nearly 110,000 Mexicans, nearly 95,000 Indians, nearly 50,000 Chinese and nearly 30,000 Filipinos obtained a Green Card. These numbers remain far less than the actual number of expats from these countries who've completed the application process.
According to the immigration advisory firm Boundless, Family-based Green Cards tend to be issued within 1-2 years, but Employment-based Green Cards take, on average, 2-3 years. Sadly, for expat workers from the four aforementioned countries, an Employment-Based Green Card can take as much longer, even as much as 10 or 15 years! Data from the US Immigration and Citizenship Services (UCSI) shows that, in 2021, there were nearly 900,000 approved Green Card petitions which were still backlogged. This was because the cap on the maximum number of Green Cards that can be legally issued had already been met. Over 80% of approved petitions from Indian expats were in that backlog. In 2023, the situation hasn't changed much.
When interviewed in May about this frustrating situation for Indian expats, Douglas Rand, a senior advisor at the UCSI, explained to the Press Trust of India that it comes down to a simple supply-and-demand problem. Because the law states that each sending country can get a maximum of 7% of all Green Cards per year, only 25,620 Indian applicants can get this permanent residence permit every year.
Many expats stuck in the backlog feel that this is deeply unfair. They think that the law should be reformed so that the cap might be proportionally adjusted to the population of each sending country and to the average number of expats it sends to the US every year. It feels unfair that expats with less qualifications and less years of work experience in the US get their Green Card before thousands of Mexicans, Indians, Chinese and Filipinos simply because they were born in a country with fewer applicants. The pro-immigration lobby FWD, for instance, says that it can realistically take Canadians less than a year to obtain a Green Card.
