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 explain 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.
Why EB-5 Is the Best Way for Indian Nationals to Get Green Cards
What Is a Green Card?
A Green Card, officially known as a Permanent Resident Card, allows foreign nationals to live and work permanently in the United States. For Indian nationals, it provides the legal right to reside in the U.S. without needing a temporary visa.
A Green Card holder can work for any employer, start a business, study, and travel in and out of the U.S. more freely. It also offers access to certain social security benefits and legal protections. Importantly, a Green Card is a key step toward U.S. citizenship through naturalization.
Types of Green Cards Available to Indian Nationals
Indian nationals can apply for a U.S. Green Card through several pathways, primarily based on family relationships, employment, or investment.
Each Green Card type has distinct advantages, timelines, and eligibility standards, making it important to choose the category that best fits an applicant’s background and goals.
Family-based Green Cards
Family-based Green Cards are available to Indian nationals who have close family members who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, such as spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents, have the highest priority and are not subject to annual caps.
Other family preference categories include unmarried adult children, married children, and siblings of U.S. citizens, as well as spouses and unmarried children of Green Card holders.
Applicants must prove a qualifying family relationship, and the U.S. sponsor must meet financial support requirements through an affidavit of support.
EB-1 (Employment-Based First Preference)
The EB-1 category is for individuals with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors or researchers, and multinational executives or managers.
Indian nationals applying under EB-1 must demonstrate:
- Sustained national or international acclaim
- Significant academic achievements
- Senior-level managerial experience with a multinational company
This category is highly competitive but offers faster processing and often does not require labor certification.
EB-2 (Employment-Based Second Preference)
EB-2 Green Cards are intended for professionals with advanced degrees or individuals with exceptional ability in fields such as science, technology, business, or medicine.
Indian nationals typically need a job offer from a U.S. employer and an approved labor certification (PERM). Some applicants may qualify for a National Interest Waiver (NIW), which allows them to bypass the job offer and labor certification requirements if their work significantly benefits the U.S.
EB-3 (Employment-Based Third Preference)
The EB-3 category covers skilled workers, professionals, and other workers. Skilled workers must have at least two years of experience, while professionals must hold a U.S. bachelor’s degree or equivalent. Indian nationals usually require a permanent job offer and labor certification. EB-3 generally has longer waiting periods compared to EB-1 and EB-2.
EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program
The EB-5 Green Card is available to Indian nationals who invest at least $1,050,000, or $800,000 in a targeted employment area (TEA).
This investment must create at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers. EB-5 applicants must also prove the lawful source of funds.
How Indian Nationals Can Apply for a Green Card
Indian nationals typically apply for a U.S. Green Card through a structured process that depends on the category they qualify under.
In most cases, the process begins with an immigrant petition filed by a qualifying U.S. family member or employer, or by the applicant themselves in eligible categories. This petition is submitted to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Once the petition is approved and a visa number becomes available for the applicant’s category, Indian nationals residing in India usually proceed through consular processing.
This involves applying for an immigrant visa through the U.S. Department of State and completing the required forms online.
Applicants must:
- Submit supporting documents
- Undergo a medical examination with an authorized physician
- Attend a biometrics appointment
- Attend an in-person interview at a U.S. consulate in India, where a consular officer reviews the application and supporting evidence
If approved, the applicant receives an immigrant visa and becomes a U.S. lawful permanent resident upon entering the United States.
Overall processing times vary widely, ranging from months to several years, depending on the Green Card category and visa availability.
Green Card Wait Times for Indian Citizens
Indian nationals typically face significantly longer wait times for U.S. Green Cards than those from many other countries do due to per-country visa limits and very high demand.
Waiting times for family-based categories (especially siblings and adult children of U.S. citizens) often stretch from years to decades. Although new visas are issued each year, demand from Indian applicants far exceeds the annual per-country limit.
As a result, cut-off dates in these categories have moved very slowly — and in some cases have remained unchanged — reflecting persistent backlogs rather than a lack of visa allocation.
We explain visa backlogs and how they work in greater detail later in this article.
EB-1 Indian priority dates move slowly but have seen modest recent forward movement, whereas EB-2 and EB-3 have very long wait times, which often extend to a decade or more from the date of filing to when a visa becomes available. Historically, analyses project waits of 10-20+ years under current limits.
The EB-5 investor category moves much more quickly, with wait times sometimes as little 12 months or less. We’ll discuss the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program in greater detail later in the article.
Overall, Indian applicants should expect multi-year to multi-decade waits in most family and employment Green Card queues, depending on the category and visa availability.
Immigration Bottleneck for Indian Applicants
USCIS, the federal agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States, receives hundreds of thousands of Green Card–related applications each year, with demand far exceeding the annual numerical limits in several categories.
Although USCIS and State Department issue 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 about 140,000.
Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens are not subject to annual numerical limits, while family-preference categories (including spouses/children of Green Card holders) are numerically capped.
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.
According to estimates derived from USCIS data published in November 2023, there were 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. These numbers are unlikely to have improved dramatically since then.
In all, nearly 1.2 million Indian applicants were 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—read the next section to learn more about these.
EB-5 Program Offers Fast-Track Immigration
In March 2022, significant changes were introduced in the EB-5 program through the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA).
This made the program more secure and transparent for Indian investors and enabled faster processing of EB-5 petitions for certain investment types.
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
- 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 in that period via H-1B even if they have a job offer.
To avoid the uncertainty of the H-1B visa, many high-skilled Indian professionals choose 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 eligibility for 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 2,700 families from 70+ countries become lawful permanent residents of the United States. 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.
If you would like to know more about your EB-5 investment options, book a free call with our expert team today.
