Large-scale immigration of Indians to the United States began in the 1960s, following amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that opened doors for merit-based immigration from Asian countries, including India.
Today, Indian-origin people are a thriving community in the United States, mostly employed in the tech sector or running successful businesses. Indians represent one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States, and their numbers continue to grow.
In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of Green Card applications from Indian nationals. However, the U.S. immigration system has been unable to keep up with the escalating demand, causing excessive processing delays and massive backlogs.
In this article, we will understand why Indian applicants face an acute shortage of Green Card availability and how the EB-5 program can offer them the best solution to surpass the mounting backlog.
Immigration Bottleneck for Indian Applicants
A Reliable Solution: EB-5 Visa
EB-5 Program Offers Fast-Track Immigration
EB-5 Visa Benefits
Contact EB5AN to Expedite Your Green Card
Immigration Bottleneck for Indian Applicants
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States, receives tens of thousands of applications from foreign nationals seeking lawful permanent resident status, or the Green Card, every year.
Although USCIS issues nearly a million Green Cards in a fiscal year, the annual quota for employment-based Green Card applications from foreign workers and entrepreneurs is only 140,000. The remaining are family-based Green Cards given to immediate relatives of current Green Card holders and U.S. citizens.
Employment-based Green Cards are divided into five visa preferences (EB-1 to EB-5), with each category allocated a fixed percentage of the total availability. Further, within each category, the annual Green Card availability for applicants from a particular country is restricted by a 7% per-country cap. This means that irrespective of a country’s population or visa application volume, there is a numerical ceiling on how many Green Cards can be issued to any single country in a fiscal year.
As a consequence, for a country like India, the high number of Green Card applications paired with limited availability has left applicants facing huge backlogs and decades-long waiting times in some EB categories.
Recent government data suggests that more than a million Indians are in the waiting line for employment-based Green Cards. Most applicants are highly skilled professionals and their dependents who have applied in the EB-1, EB-2, or EB-3 categories. Here’s a lowdown on what each of these categories stands for:
EB-1 (First Preference): Priority workers with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers, and multinational executives or managers.
EB-2 (Second Preference): Professionals holding advanced degrees or persons with exceptional ability in arts, science, or business.
EB-3 (Third Preference): Skilled workers and other professionals.
According to estimates derived from USCIS data published in November 2023, there are 143,497 Indians in the EB-1 category backlog, 838,784 Indians in the EB-2 category backlog, and 277,162 Indians in the EB-3 category backlog.
In all, nearly 1.2 million Indian applicants are facing long years of uncertainty while waiting to become permanent residents of the United States. As wait times run into decades, some of them may never receive their Green Card in their lifetime.
A Reliable Solution: EB-5 Visa
The EB-5 visa, or the employment-based fifth preference visa, offers a Green Card to foreign entrepreneurs in exchange for investment in a U.S. business enterprise. Over the years, it has emerged as a faster and more reliable alternative for foreign nationals looking to secure permanent residence status in the United States.
The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program was created in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. It enables investors and their eligible dependent family members (the spouse and unmarried children under 21) to obtain lawful permanent residency in the United States by investing a minimum amount in a new commercial enterprise and creating 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.
Every fiscal year, the EB-5 category is allocated approximately 10,000 Green Cards that are issued to applicants who meet the USCIS qualifying criteria. Although the 7% per-country cap applies to the EB-5 program participants as well, the waiting line is shorter for EB-5 than for other employment-based categories.
What’s more, the program offers some reserved EB-5 visas that have no backlog and no extra waiting time at all, as we will explore in the next section.
EB-5 Program Offers Fast-Track Immigration
In March 2022, significant measures were introduced in the EB-5 program through the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA). The groundbreaking reforms not only made the program more secure and transparent for Indian investors but also offered faster processing of EB-5 petitions for certain types of investments.
Set-Aside Visas and Priority Processing
The RIA introduced a 32% set-aside visa quota that has dramatically improved processing times for high-demand nationalities. Of the total EB-5 visas available in a fiscal year, the RIA allocated 20% of visas for investments in rural area projects, 10% for high-unemployment area projects, and 2% for developmental infrastructure projects.
If Indian investors choose to invest in projects qualifying for the set-aside categories, they will not need to wait in the unreserved EB-5 visa queue. They can bypass the backlog and receive their permanent residency as soon as their I-526E petition is approved, which may take less than a year.
Rural category investors have the added benefit of priority processing, as mandated by the RIA. With 20% reserved visas, rural investments can be the best option for Indian investors seeking a Green Card in the shortest possible time.
EB-5 Concurrent Filing
The RIA implemented another measure called EB-5 concurrent filing for eligible applicants already residing in the United States on a non-immigrant visa.
Under this provision, investors can file their EB-5 visa petition (Form I-526E) and Form I-485 for adjustment of status (AOS) concurrently, after which they can continue to stay in the United States while they wait for their application to be processed.
Applicants can also receive a work permit and travel authorization within a few weeks of applying. This provision provides them with all the benefits of a Green Card even before it is granted, shortening their wait by many years.
Golden Opportunity for H-1B Workers
EB-5 concurrent filing can be a great opportunity for Indian nationals already in the United States on an H-1B work visa. The H-1B visa has been a popular choice for tech companies for hiring highly skilled foreign workers, most of whom come from India. However, it is a temporary non-immigrant visa with many limitations.
If an H-1B worker loses employment, they have only 60 days to find another job and maintain their visa status. If they fail, they must leave the country with their family. Even after living in the United States for many years, many H-1B workers have had to return to their home country as they could not retain their job-dependent visa status.
Moreover, due to the high demand for H-1B visas, applicants are randomly selected through a lottery system until the annual cap is reached. If applicants are not selected in the lottery, they cannot live and work in the United States even if they have a job offer.
To avoid the uncertainty of the H-1B visa, many high-skilled Indian professionals are choosing the EB-5 investment route to get permanent resident status in the United States.
EB-5 Visa Benefits
Besides offering permanent residency and the freedom to live, work, and study anywhere in the United States, the EB-5 visa has many other advantages for investors and their families.
As the EB-5 visa is not tied to employment, it allows investors to take up any job anywhere in the United States without restrictions.
Indian investors and their family members get access to a world-class education system and prestigious universities, with benefits such as in-state tuition rates at public institutions, scholarships, and financial aid.
EB-5 visa holders get the same social benefits as U.S. citizens, such as health insurance, top-quality medical care, Social Security benefits, and pension during retirement years.
Also, they become eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship just five years after receiving their initial conditional permanent resident status.
Contact EB5AN to Expedite Your Green Card
The EB-5 program is one of the most viable pathways for Indian nationals to get a U.S. Green Card without years of waiting, and EB5AN can support them in navigating the immigration process with ease.
EB5AN has helped more than 2,300 families from 60 countries relocate to the United States as lawful permanent residents. Our expert team has more than a decade of experience and offers clients first-rate, low-risk EB-5 regional center projects with a 100% USCIS project approval rate.
To hear about the real-life success stories of Indian EB-5 investors, check out our testimonials.
For more information about the EB-5 program, book a free call with our team today.
