EB-2/EB-3 for Indians

The green card blues

If you’re an Indian in the US (or thinking about moving to the US), you likely know the problems with immigrating to the US. By virtue of being born in the most populous country on Earth, the employment-based green card route is effectively closed to Indians.

However, there isn’t a clear way to know how long the wait may be. And if you don’t know how long, then you can’t easily plan what you’d like to do. So, I wrote a script to estimate when your priority date may be current (i.e. when you are able to move forward in the green card process). Ping me directly if you want the predicted date for your priority date.

If you don’t care about a high-level of precision, here are some numbers that may be useful:

• If your priority date is after December 2018, you’re almost certainly only going to be eligible for a green card after you retire (after 2060).
• If your priority date is before Jun 2015, you may get it in ~10 years from now (2035-2036).

And for a high-level overview, here’s a visual representation of the estimate.

Not a recommendation, but if interested you could read my EB-5 post as well.

Note: As of Sep 2025, there are around 48000 I-485 applications filed before Jan 2015 that are pending. This should clear in aroud 8 years, which aligns well with what the script predicted (~2033 for someone who filed in Jan 2015).