More than 8 lakh Indians are waiting for an employment-based green card in the United States as of now, according to data from Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data. 

According to a report in the Economic Times, the green card backlog for employment-based immigrants in 2020 crossed 1.2 million applicants, the highest ever. Indians comprise about 68% of this. The publication citing a paper by US think tank Cato Institute, mentioned that Indian employer-sponsored applicants face an eight-decade wait for green card and nearly 2 lakh applicants will die before thay can even theoritically reach the front of the line. 

Typically, large companies use the employment based green cards, or the Permanent Employment Program (PERM), to hold on to high-skilled workers by sponsoring their permanent residency in the United States. There is currently a 7% annual country cap on about 140,000 PERM green cards that are issued annually.

In the paper, David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, said that the backlog was a result of insufficient numbers under the green card limits and not a delay in processing applications.

As a result of the country cap, once a petition is approved, if the quota has been exhausted, the applicant moves to the backlog.

However, with US President-elect Joe Biden making green card a part of his election agenda, there have been calls to reform the PERM process. But experts say it would be a longdrawn process before this can happen.

According to the paper, the EB-2 and EB-3 category backlog from India reached 741,209 in April and that, despite the spill over from the family-based categories, backlogged petitions still face an expected wait of 84 years.

Both categories are combined due to the potential for EB-2 workers to switch to the EB-3 category for advanced degree holders if wait times become more favourable there.