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by letitgo12345 3346 days ago
Given how awful wait times for green cards have gotten for Indians (even with a Masters from a top university (and sometimes even PhD...), if you apply now, you can expect to wait a couple of decades while for every other country but China you get it immediately), I think a lot of Indians are fine with gambling on drastic changes to be honest and seeing where the chips fall.
2 comments

Not sure where you getting your information from - I've worked with ppl from the Middle East and Eastern Europe and it was taking them years to get their green cards. I know this guy from Lebanon who ended up moving to Canada to work for the same company he was working for in the US because he overstayed his h1b and was nowhere near getting a green card.
Not the parent, but he is right. If you are not from India or China, the GC takes about a year - once you find an employer who would apply for it. People who are from India or China wait for the same amount of time plus about a decade.

I often run into people who ask me about my immigration status and when I say that I am waiting for my GC to be done, they nod sympathetically, roll their eyes and tell about someone they know who "had to wait two years! Gosh!!". I tell them, with as much politeness I can muster, that I have been in the country for over 10 years, have filed for my GC 5 years ago,, and expect to wait another 5 to get it.

The waiting times for some countries suck but there's a reason for that.

If the US didn't have a considerable amount of immigrants from those countries then the times would be 8x less.

Same happens with Mexico. There are so many Mexican immigrants in the US already (legal and illegal) that getting a GC it's almost impossible now unless you have a legitimate marriage to a citizen.

> If the US didn't have a considerable amount of immigrants from those countries then the times would be 8x less.

No, past levels of immigration has no bearing on the backlogs. For example Germany, Ireland, Italy etc have no skilled immigration backlogs.

Given the slow rate at which cutoff dates move, I fully expect it to take 20 years before the EB2 (essentially masters for those unfamiliar with the system) queue catches up to the present.
Colleague from Latvia got it in under a year, he said Germans would have a similar time frame. Russians as well I think
Anybody applying to become an employment-based immigrant other than those born in India, China, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico or Philippines will get theirs processed in about a year. For specifics, see the table titled "Employment based" in the latest visa bulletin at https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...
Masters and PhD matters for the green card process. I don't think the institution matters.

Maybe there ought to be another level for folks who have won awards from recognized societies and associations such as Nobel, ACM, what not

That is a non-immigrant work visa good for up to 3 years. It is not intended to be used by immigrants. It is not a permanent status like a green card.