[prostoalex]

My understanding is that current employment-based green card process is constrained entirely by slow turnaround by Department of Labor and USCIS, not some company shenanigans or legislative provisions for artificial delays, at least according to http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/E2e... And that slow turnaround is predicated by DoL / USCIS budgets and their ability to hire and train proper employees.

[bsder]

You are 100% correct. HOWEVER, you don't see the companies lobbying to increase the funding to DoL/USCIS.

The reason is that the choke point benefits these companies. If you cleared the backlog so that a green card was a 12 month process, the companies would quit asking for H1-B's unless they really wanted them.

[calvinbhai]

not true. these green cards are given (in addition to employment based GC requirements) based on the country of birth (to maintain diversity).

If US gives X green cards to nationals of Y countries (X>>Y) in a year, each country is allocated X/Y number of green cards.

This puts Indians, Chinese and other high population countries at a disadvantage.

An Indian applying for green card in EB-3 category (minimum qualifications being undergrad degree + 3 yrs experience i think) has to wait for ~12 years from the date his gc process was started. EB-2 (advanced degree and/or 5+ yrs experience) is ~10 years (these are my ballpark numbers)

Its not the turnaround time, but the concept of diversity based green cards that slows down the process.