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> The reason for this delay in getting citizenship is an effort to promote diversity among immigrants to the US. No single country can get more than 5% of the permanent resident visas in any given year. 7%, and note that this applies separately to employment-based and family-based immigration, not just in total, which is why the backlogs (and which countries have backlogs) differ between countries. > If this wasn't done, the vast majority of immigrants to the US would be from China and India Mexico, actually, by a very, very, very large margin (and that may understate the size of the margin.) The annual quota for family-based immigration is nearly double that for employment-based, and Mexico dominates the waiting list in every family-based category (as well as showing up on the waiting list in several employment-based categories.) Mexico has more people on the waiting to lost for Family Fourth Preference alone than (1) the total annual US immigratiom quota for all categories, (2) twice the number the next two countries have on the waiting list in all categories combined, (3) three times what China has on the waiting list in all categories, combined. They also, aside from waiting lists, have a huge number of immigrants in the unlimited “immediate relative” category (which is uncapped itself, but effects the allocations to the other categories), about 9% of total US immigrant visas of all kinds issued in 2017 were for immigrants from Mexico in that category. India and China have the most applicants annually in most employment-based categories, but they don't come anywhere close to dominating total applications or total visas that would be issued if the only change was eliminating the per country cap. |