US: Green Card Wait Time Likely To Remain High For Indians.

The wait for green cards for Indian applicants is likely to remain long, with 369,322 applicants having approved employment visa petitions awaiting visa availability, as per recent data from the US immigration agency.

All these are applicants under the EB2 and EB3 categories, used by tech companies to sponsor visas for immigrant workers. The option for a green card, or permanent residence, is available on these visas.

These applicants have an approved Form 1-140, the first step towards an employment-based green card.

This doesn’t mean that they have been issued green cards. As per data released by the USCIS, Indians filed the highest number of I-140 petitions in the first 2 quarters of fiscal 2022 (October 2021-March 2022), in line with the trends over the last several years. The agency received 37,719 applications in the 6 months. 25,274 applications were approved in the same period, including some filed earlier.

The US agency has sped up the processing of employment-based green cards this year, doing away with in-person interviews for several applicants. “Interviewing all employment-based applicants was a practice implemented by the Trump administration that adds multiple years to the green card processing.

Last fiscal year, nearly 80,000 green cards went unused because of processing delays, which the immigration agency is trying to avoid this year.