How so? There’s a 100+ year wait on EB2 and EB3 Green Cards for people born in India. Only 7% of GCs can go to people of any one country. At the current cap of 49000, it means only 3400 EB2 GCs can actually be issued to Indians per year. An approved application doesn’t equate to a green card actually minted and issued. There’s a 12 year backlog on applications alone. (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...)
H1B is neither a green card nor a path to one.
There is one category that has no cap at all however. The “Immediate relative of a US citizen” one.
>There’s a 100+ year wait on EB2 and EB3 Green Cards for people born in India.
No-one knows what the actual wait period is until the priority date for applications established - this is all based off estimates and extrapolations. A priority date is not a backlog in applications - it's the date which, if you applied before then, that you can file for adjustment-of-status which is more or less a pro-forma process.
The link you've provided shows a priority date of 2012 for people born in India looking for EB-2 visas. Priority dates for that combination have had implied wait times of between about 8 and 12 years since 2014.
>this is all based off estimates and extrapolations
This is not exactly rocket science. The supply is largely fixed (a few thousand a year), and the pending inventory is ~1M (based on published data). Barring legislative change, the extrapolation, even if off by several factors, moves the dates in the range of years or decades. There is no meaningful difference once you are past a few decades. At that point, the worker is at the end of the career and unless (s)he gets residency through some other path, the original work path is moot.
>wait times of between about 8 and 12 years since 2014
This is not a fixed delta. It was close to 10 years for someone in 2010; it's not 10 years if you file today - it is several decades. Demand has vastly outpaced supply.
H1B is neither a green card nor a path to one.
There is one category that has no cap at all however. The “Immediate relative of a US citizen” one.