According to a senior official, the country-based quota system in its allocation, which can only be amended by the US Congress, is the primary cause of the protracted and agonizing wait for green cards for people from India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines.
According to a news report from Washington on May 19, Douglas Rand, the Senior Advisor to the Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), stated that the annual limit set by Congress for family-sponsored preference green cards is 2,26,000 for the entire world, while the annual limit for employment-based green cards is 1,40,000.
A Green Card, often referred to as a Permanent Resident Card, is a legal document given to immigrants in the US as proof that they have been granted permission to live there permanently.
The wait for a green card has now lasted more than ten years for hundreds of thousands of Indian professionals, while visa wait times frequently stretch back several years.
Due to the seven percent nation ceiling limit, there are only about 7,000–8,000 employment-based green cards granted to Indian citizens each year. Since dependents of primary applicants are counted among the 7,000–8,000, this means that 2,000 individual H-1B candidates from India receive green cards each year.
