Decade of waiting?
 

Hello all,

I'm currently waiting for a F1 green card to come through. My priority date is in December 2013. I've heard the waiting period for F1s are usually 6-7 years. But after checking http://www.mygcvisa.com/Calculator/ it seems it'll be ready in 2023, a ten year wait!!

Is this true? I do hope British applicants get theirs a little faster! ;)

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

Goes up and down but believe average is 10-12 years? Current visa bulletin shows pd of 2007 http://travel.state.gov/content/visa...pril-2014.html

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

Predicting how these queues move is very difficult - there are web boards dedicated to crunching these numbers, but not even the Department of State knows what will happen.

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

The link you give is to an independent site. Who knows what algorithm they are using.

Here is a chart on historical cut-off date provided by the Department of State. In reviewing it, please note that the government fiscal year ["FY"] starts the prior October 1st. For the beginning of FY 1992 was October 1, 1991.

In reviewing the ups and downs -- please note that there was special legislation in place ["245(i)"] which had the effect of causing a spike in filings between December 21, 2000 and April 30, 2001. This distorted the processing.

Also, as often said, it is common to conflate the backlog with how long the case will take. It is difficult to tell how many people are in front of you. It is an inexact art to predict how long things will take.

Also, visa use also depends upon future events such as dependents being added, falling off, conversion [via marriage or divorce] to and from other classifications and death of other beneficiaries. Many people on the lists never use the allocation.

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

To be pedantic - you're waiting for an immigrant visa... not a green card.


Generally, yes... but, as others have advised, use the Visa Bulletin from the official site.


Sorry, but that's not how things happen.

Ian

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

I've heard there is talk of reforming the immigration system from a mainly family-based system to a more skills-based system, possibly stopping the sibling route. Of course this may never happen, due to obstructionism in Congress, but I wonder what would happen to existing petitions?

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

I assume this is to prevent total collapse of the white majority. Hopefully they'll just stop taking on new petitions! ;)

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

"white majority"? If they do away with the sibling category, it will affect all applicants, not just the "white" ones.

Rene

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

General comment: quite often when there have been changes in the immigration & nationality act, there is some type of "savings clause." What the nature of that is can vary.

For example, before 1977 there was the Western Hemisphere quota with no classifications or country limits. One just registered. In the October 1976 legislation [taking effect on 1-1-1977], the law imposed the same classification system on the Western Hemisphere and did away with the "non-preference" category, but allowed retention of the priority date which could be used for any other classification the person might become eligible for.

What does the future hold? I have no idea.

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

When you think about it, much of it makes little sense.

I was wondering how Obamacare will impact things, used to be said that the US was not somewhere to bring aged relatives, but with access to Obamacare close to free for those with little income then the situation changes.

Especially when most peoples major medical expenses are incurred in the last few months of life.

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

The estimates that calculator is giving seem pretty accurate to me, I posted the link to the CRS report awhile ago which has a graph in it showing the exponential increase in demand for visas.

USCIS gave up processing I-130s for preference categories in 2010 because they know the wait is going to be so long. This makes determining the trend from 2010 onwards hard because we don't know how many I-130s USCIS is sitting on (or maybe someone does but it wasn't in that CRS report).

Do not make the mistake everyone seems to make which is to take today's date and minus off the date in the visa bulletin. The dates do not move forward with the current date, they move forward with the demand for visas and are limited by the quota.

Since the forms went up on the web in 1998 the number of petitions filed has ballooned so you will be waiting a long time whatever preference category you are in. The general trend in the priority dates is that they are moving forward ever more slowly, so I assume that calculator has extrapolated that trend.

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

Well, S. 744 has a provision which takes the backlog and gets rid of it over seven years. Basically it takes it, and then divides it by seven so you would be waiting no more than seven years.

However it has zero chance of passing in the House.

I think what will happen is that third and fourth preference will be scrapped and current applicants will be grandfathered in and something will be done to speed them up but that is total speculation.

Just had a go with that calculator and it is saying a 30-year wait for a fourth preference petition filed today, which is more optimistic than what I worked out!

Re: Decade of waiting?
 

Pure speculation as you note.

However, the FB-4 has purportedly on the chopping block for the last 35 years and it never seems to be eliminated. FB-3 I usually don't see all that many proposals to eliminate that one. Time will tell. Also, contrary to the employment based side of the shop, every family based case has a petitioner who can either vote or will soon be eligible to vote.

As for how long, there are so many factors that enter into it and lack of information that it is hard to tell and predict the future. Many people fall off the waiting lists by the simple expedient of dying or simply deciding not to immigrate when the time comes.