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by whack 2329 days ago
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.

Not disputing how ridiculous your situation is, but you do have a couple other options.

The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.

The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.

The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.

3 comments

> The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.

I'm an early career engineer, and this is something that a few of my friends have looked into. The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save, cause there will be more people like me. Unless I become sufficiently senior and comparatively rich like a VP, I can't realistically beat the trend.

> The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.

This is true. Your tradeoff point hits the nail on the head. I have heard some cases of people feeling like they were married to just for the GC, and some from the other side who stand some abuse. But your broad point stands.

> The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.

Need to progress outside the US though. Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor, the logic of the law seems to suggest that if I could rise to this position here, then an American could too. That's why the EB-1 has an allocation for applicants who became managers outside the US and transferred in.

I have upvoted you and I feel you make some great points. I wanted to iron out some details in case a third person was reading this.

> The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save

The number was 500k for almost 30 years, without any increases for inflation at all. No one can predict whether it will increase again in future, but going solely off of history, there's a very good chance it will stay at the current numbers for a while.

> Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor

I have personally met people who have successfully gotten the EB-1 without being nearly as successful as the examples you gave. If you're as successful as the average FANG employee, and have ~5-10+ years of work experience, you might have a realistic shot. I would recommend talking to some people who have gone through this process first hand, before dismissing it.

I see where you're coming from, but any of those options aren't realistic, especially when I compare them to Canada's system.

As I noted in my comment, I can stay here for a while hoping for some way of getting a green card. It's those 10-20 years that I don't want to endure, with which again I need extreme luck (I would consider me saving up $1MM within 10 years or becoming a EB-1 level 'multi-national manager' not a guarantee).

If I did go the Canada route, I can do these things there (making $1MM or becoming an C-suite executive) - however unlikely those goals are, while not risking having my life uprooted. Canada doesn't pay as high as US, but then again I don't have to worry about going back to India (where jobs don't pay as well as either US or Canada) and finding a job there without notice.

EB-5 isn't too realistic either, considering the wait time between applying and actually receiving a green card is ~10 years.
Can you clarify? The EB5 priority date for India is Sept-2018, so why would it take 10 years?

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

The visa bulletin is useful for past applicants, but is not generally helpful for current or recent applicants. The question current applicants should ask is: if I apply today, when will I get my green card?

Last year, the State Department (which runs the bulletin and has all the numbers) said[1] 8.4 years for India EB-5 until visa number availability. It then takes around a year to actually get the physical green card. So, 10 years is a good estimate for someone applying today.

1. The last slide of https://iiusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IIUSA-2019-EB5-...