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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of friends at work that have H1B visas. They try to get green cards but the process drags out often for more than a decade. Why is it so hard for people who want to be here, and who have well paying jobs, to get green cards?

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There’s a limit on number of green cards per year. Then there’s a hard limit of 7% of that per country. There’s also a priority system with Family coming first. The combination of three results in a really long wait time for Indians without family (who are citizens) in the US moving on H1B. The current priority date is 2012 if I’m not wrong. It did progress faster during the pandemic but got quickly rolled back. Remember that those who come on H1B are already capped per year.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

It’s country based. I have family and it took them less than 6 months. For Indian and Chinese, they can forget about it.

Surely you should ask that to your Congressman, not a lawyer...

But if you are here on an H1B you don't actually have a congressman. The US citizens you are competing against do. And this is why the system works the way it does.

If I have a green card I can donate to political candidates though. I don't know how many dollars is equivalent to one vote, that probably varies by candidate.

So H1Bs are also competing against green card holders with more political power than them, not just citizens.

You have a congressman. That is, you have representation but not suffrage rights. Congresspeople will assist with making congressional inquiries. Their political incentives are a separate matter, but even advocacy ultimately has to get to the legislature. The failures of the system aren't a result of the H1Bs v/s US Citizens dynamic. In reality, there are several different groups with their own incentives. Kind of like how failures of US healthcare isn't a patients v/s doctors dynamic.

I recall hearing that the wait time for green card approval depends on the home country of the applicant. There were a lot of applicants from India when I talked with people who were getting a green card. So the wait for an Indian applicant was much longer than, say, an applicant from Canada.

Not sure what the wait times are now, but I doubt the USA has caught up on the Indian wait list, esp. during/after the pandemic.

It’s by country of birth. So that applicant with the long wait could be from Canada if they were born in India.

Looks like there's a small backlog for Mexico/Philippines, large backlog for China and even larger for India-born employment-based applicants.

see https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... and click on the latest bulletin. You'll probably want to look at the employment-based green card waiting list.

Note that if the country of birth is not explicity listed, such as Canada, the intending immigrant must use the column "All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed".

For example, a EB2 applicant born in Canada filing today would be backlogged because the date of filing is listed as 01JAN23.

Because people with high paying jobs have political power as a class and it is in our interest to make importing foreign competition difficult.

People with low paying jobs do not have political power and are unable to set up legal protection for themselves.

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