Congressional stalemateĮven as the green card demand stays high, legislative proposals to reduce the backlog have languished in Congress, despite enjoying some bipartisan support.Ĭongress came close two years ago to passing legislation that would eliminate the per-country caps, which prevent any one country from eating up more than 7 percent of total employment-based green cards. “Having said that, the backlogs are still significant,” he said. “It did clear out a lot of cases that have been pending for a long time.” “I think that the fact that the agency was able to issue twice the normal annual allocation, over 280,000 employment-based immigrant visas, is a significant accomplishment,” Turansick said. The agency estimated that 95,000 Indian citizens received an employment-based green card this year, which is more than four times the typical number before the pandemic. “Efforts to eliminate intake delays and reduce biometric backlogs in FY21 allowed USCIS to find unique solutions in order to capture all available visas in FY22, while still balancing other priorities, including naturalization, work authorization applications, emerging humanitarian initiatives, and ongoing staffing challenges,” the spokesperson said. Last fiscal year, the immigration agency let tens of thousands of extra slots go to waste due to agency processing delays, which angered immigrants who had spent years in a backlog waiting for a green card to become available.Ī USCIS spokesperson credited the “tremendous effort of the USCIS workforce and our partners at the Department of State” for the agency’s ability to process all available employment-based green cards this fiscal year. In years past, USCIS failed to rise to the occasion when there were extra employment-based green card slots. This made room for more employment-based green cards. Those extra cards were available this fiscal year because of the way green cards are allocated between foreign citizens sponsored by their jobs and foreign citizens sponsored by spouses or family members.Īt the end of each fiscal year, any unused family-based green card slots are added to the following year’s cap of employment-based green cards, while extra employment-based green card slots expire.įamily-based green card processing has taken a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic due to closures at State Department consular offices. 30, the agency announced earlier this month. 31 and is “well-positioned” to process all the 281,507 employment-based green cards available by the end of this fiscal year on Sept. USCIS, the Department of Homeland Security agency that processes requests for visas and other benefits, had more than double the usual number of employment-based green slots to work with this fiscal year because of a confluence of immigration law and processing halts due to the pandemic.Įmployment-based green cards are typically capped at 140,000 per year, a congressionally mandated visa limit that, combined with per-country visa caps, caused a waitlist to build up over time, particularly for Indian citizens.īut USCIS had issued more than 263,000 employment-based green cards as of Aug. “This problem is not going anywhere unless Congress changes the employment-based green card caps.” One-year boost “There’s more demand than ever for employment-based green cards,” said David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute think tank. It also likely alleviated the labor crunch for companies searching for skilled workers in health care and other industries.īut the agency won’t be able to maintain that increased pace without action from Congress, where proposals to allow more employment-based green cards each year have been caught in the political thicket of immigration reform and border security. Citizenship and Immigration Services is on track this fiscal year to process the most employment-based green cards in the history of the program, after several years of falling short on processing goals.įor the tens of thousands of highly educated foreign citizens who got their green cards this year, the processing boost was life-changing, chopping years off their wait times.
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