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Its not that bad in the recent years. I applied for my labor in aug 2012 (step 1), it was approved in less than 3 months. later applied for I140 (step 2), it was too approved in less than 4 months. Since I have an approved I140, my wife (an H4 holder) can apply for EAD under this new rule. Also the rule states that its either approved I140 OR H1B over 6 years.

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You got lucky.

Right now the average processing time for PERM is 8 months (235 days): http://dolstats.com/ and it used to be worse (government shutdown). Also preparing PERM takes some time and it can't be speeded up. So it can take well over a year just to get PERM and it doesn't take it account risk that you will have to start over for any reason (e.g. change jobs, change in company legal or organizational structure, HR got busy, someone involved in the process like manager change jobs).

PERM fixed the labor certification bottleneck, but the adjustment of status bottleneck is where people now get caught up, especially those in EB3 and/or coming from a high demand country (China, India, and Mexico).

Without a real fix to the immigration system that will remain the bottleneck for over 90% of employment based applications.

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