If an Indian national is applying for a US employment-based green card this year, they may have to wait up to an estimated 179 years to get in front of the queue. For Chinese nationals, the estimated wait is up to 25 years, according to a report by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) that analysed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services data.
Since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term, he has pursued an aggressive deportation drive and immigration crackdown that includes revocations of visas and green cards and rejection of applications for a range of reasons, like political opinions and pro-Palestinian protests against US ally Israel’s assault on Gaza. The employment-based backlog in the EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories increased by 20.6 per cent in the past five years, reaching an estimated 1.26 million people by December 2025, up from about 1.05 million in April 2020, according to the report. Category-wise, the backlog was maximum in the EB-3 category at 30.1 per cent, followed by 22.9 per cent in the EB-2 category and 16.6 per cent in EB-1. While Trump campaigned in 2024 on a platform of stopping illegal immigration, his administration has also made legal immigration more difficult—for example, by imposing new and expensive fees for applicants for certain work visas.
