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On top of that, the pain is extra bad for people from India, where the queue wait is effectively infinite. While for Chinese people it's a relatively tractable 5 years last time I checked.

Indeed this assumes your priority date is current, which it is for all EB2 excluding India and China, and many EB3s. [1]

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/visabulletininfo

Why should it take more than a couple of days?

The longest part of the process is the labor market test to ensure there are no willing, able and qualified American workers. This includes advertising the position in a number of different locations and channels for a set number of days and interviewing any American workers that apply.

Right, what purpose does that serve?

Economies are demand driven. Participation is good. Banning foreign workers to protect a subset of American workers is bad.