Slick Lawyers, Sloppy Staff Make Immigration Waiting Lists Even Worse
By David North on May 18, 2023
One of the immigration system’s lesser problems — the border crisis overshadows all others — is the backlog in the employment-based (EB-2) program. In fiscal year 2020, the Congressional Research Service projected a backlog of 568,414 EB-2 visas for people from India, 59,034 for Chinese aliens, and no backlog at all for “RoW” or the rest of the world (see Table 2 in this CRS report).
There about 40,000 of these EB-2 visas that can be used in a single year. They are for “aliens of exceptional ability” or those with advanced degrees. Those with “extraordinary ability” — a higher threshold — or “outstanding professors or researchers” and certain international executives get EB-1 visas.
The CRS report includes a projection of the EB-2 visa waiting time for Indians for fiscal year 2030 at 436 years
America’s practice, something unknown elsewhere in the world, is to put into the visa queue aliens who appear to be qualified for the document in question despite the fact that congressional ceilings mean that the visas cannot be used for years or decades to come. The CRS report includes a projection of the EB-2 visa waiting time for Indians for fiscal year 2030 at 436 years; yes, years. (I think that you could come up with such a number only if you assumed that no one on the waiting list ever died; I am not sure who would hire a 436-year-old worker.)
With more than 600,000 people standing in line for the EB-2 visas, you might think that Congress would do something about the situation. But nothing has happened; the problem is that doing anything is more painful than just ignoring the issue. One could simply let them all in, but that would tip our immigration mix even further toward a single nation, India. One could simply eliminate the waiting list, but that would seem to be unduly harsh on a population that dutifully filled all those requirements, and paid certain fees, counting on America to deliver a green card.
https://cis.org/North/Slick-Lawyers-Sloppy-Staff-Make-Immigration-Waiting-Lists-Even-Worse
