[grahamgooch]

This is a good thing. Adjustment of status for those within the USA is backlogged- by years for people from certain countries. Going to the home consulate for the final stamp will save years for many people.

F1 and h1 are non-immigrant visa.

American law only allows a person to reside in the country with one Visa type.

The green card is an immigrant visa - and the new visa is issued through an adjustment of status for those inside the USA (backlogged) or by consulates (nearly immediately).

So this is a good thing. It’s easy to get alarmed.

[ceejayoz]

Why is it "nearly immediately" at a consulate but "backlogged" in the US? Why can't that be fixed?

[throwaway_62022]

This is not true. It is not nearly immediate at US consulate and backlogged in US. The parent doesn't know what they are talking about.

[grahamgooch]

I went thru CP myself. It saved me 3 years

[airstrike]

"Didn't happen to me so therefore it won't happen to anyone."

[grahamgooch]

Because America only has a few processing centers in within the US where is that literally hundreds and hundreds of consulates that can now take on this activity they have always been doing this activity but the vast majority of the backlog is caused by the slow processing of the US processing centers.

[ceejayoz]

So why not… expand the processing centers?

[lostmsu]

Maybe consulates are idling

[freediddy]

USCIS serializes it and they have a limited number of workers. CP shards it based on country so it will be much faster for many people.

[ceejayoz]

That's a what, not a why.

Why can't USCIS shard it based on country within the US in a similar fashion?

[arrowleaf]

The whole immigration system could easily be reformed and modernized if efficiency and speeding up the legal route to citizenship were the goal.

[grahamgooch]

Each country can only get 8500 gc’s per year. My numbers are probably incorrect, but some countries have literally hundreds and thousands of people in the pipeline while some other countries only have perhaps thousand. The ones with long waiting periods will clearly benefit. Edit. Via OpenAI

2025, the cap was about 26,323 per country because the total visa pool was larger.

Important details:

1. The cap applies to: * Employment-based green cards * Family preference green cards 2. The cap does NOT apply to: * Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens * spouses * parents * unmarried children under 21 Those categories are uncapped. 3. The cap is based on: * Country of birth (“chargeability”) * Not citizenship. 4. In practice, countries like: * India * China * Mexico * Philippines hit the cap constantly, causing very large backlogs.

Simple example:

If 500,000 Indians qualify for employment-based green cards, but only ~25k–30k can be allocated annually under the cap system, the remainder wait in line. That is why Indian EB-2 and EB-3 wait times can stretch into decades.

[grahamgooch]

Because it’s literally not better than the DmV

[ceejayoz]

My county's DMV is fast and helpful.

Demand better from your government.

(And this still raises the question of why the consulates supposedly don't have this issue.)

[truncate]

DMV (at-least in Bay Area) is exponentially better and straighforward than any of processes around immigration / visa renewals.

[sunshowers]

The Oakland CA DMV, which is the one I live closest to, is quite nice. I've never had a bad time there.

[grahamgooch]

Exactly. An extra points for using HN lingo.:)

[arrowleaf]

From what I've gathered, the consular route is nowhere near immediate, especially if they are from one of the countries typically backlogged (e.g. India). You're saying that someone who gets married while on F1 + OPT/STEM should leave with their partner, potentially for months if not years, while pursuing the consular route.

[grahamgooch]

No. All it leans that you go to the consulate on your appt and get your immigrant visa stamped - you get an appointment date and that’s it’s. It was a 3 hour process for me. I flew into Frankfurt and flew out the same evening.

[kylehotchkiss]

Consulates are not nearly immediately. You have to wait months-years for appointments at some.