[arcticbull]

> For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today.

If you've got a motivated employer you can get it done in 18 months.

- PERM takes 6-9 months to prepare.

- PERM takes 120 days to certify currently.

- I-140, I-485, I-765, I-131 and I-693 can be filed simultaneously for rest-of-world.

- I-140 with premium processing takes 1-15 days (3-12 months without).

- I-485 takes 8-14 months, but after 180 days you're AC21 portable.

[sjs7007]

I think you are missing the point that it's only a pain point for countries with a backlog, not ones without a backlog. 3-4 years in the grand scheme of things is not all that long for gaining PR of a different country.

[novok]

On top of that, the pain is extra bad for people from India, where the queue wait is effectively infinite. While for Chinese people it's a relatively tractable 5 years last time I checked.

[arcticbull]

Indeed this assumes your priority date is current, which it is for all EB2 excluding India and China, and many EB3s. [1]

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/visabulletininfo

[maxerickson]

Why should it take more than a couple of days?

[huy-nguyen]

The longest part of the process is the labor market test to ensure there are no willing, able and qualified American workers. This includes advertising the position in a number of different locations and channels for a set number of days and interviewing any American workers that apply.

[maxerickson]

Right, what purpose does that serve?

Economies are demand driven. Participation is good. Banning foreign workers to protect a subset of American workers is bad.