In December 2019, Akhilesh Malavalli marched through downtown San Jose with dozens of other Indian tech workers, all of them holding approved green card petitions and no path to actually receive one. "We need to wait 150 years to get a green card," he told a local TV station at the time. "I'll be dead by the time we see a green card." Six years later, the number has not gotten better. It has gotten worse. New data released this year puts the wait for an Indian-born worker in the EB-2 category — the visa track for people with advanced degrees or exceptional ability — at 179 years.

The numbers, and how they got this bad

According to a policy brief published August 26, 2026 by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), the total US employment-based green card backlog has passed 1.26 million people, up more than 20% since April 2020. Nearly one million of those people — 996,599, according to the brief's underlying data — are from India alone, making up about 79% of the entire queue.

NFAP's wait-time projection for an Indian national whose employer files a new petition in January 2026 or later: about 5 years in EB-1, 179 years in EB-2, and 38 years in EB-3. Without a change in the law, NFAP projects the total employment-based backlog could exceed 2 million people by 2040.

The October 2026 Visa Bulletin makes the practical effect visible in a single line. For Indian applicants this month, USCIS is still processing EB-2 petitions filed before November 1, 2013, and EB-3 petitions filed before January 1, 2014 — meaning anyone who filed after those dates, more than a decade ago, is still waiting for their number to come up.

Why this happens almost entirely to one country

The mechanism is not really about India at all — it is about arithmetic applied unevenly. Congress has capped total employment-based immigrant visas at 140,000 a year since 1990, a number that includes both workers and their spouses and children. Layered on top of that is a per-country limit: under Section 202(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, no single country can receive more than 7% of the green cards issued in a category in a given year — the same 7% ceiling whether the country has a population of 300,000 or 1.4 billion.

Because Indian nationals file a disproportionate share of US employer-sponsored petitions, especially in technology and engineering roles, demand from India routinely exceeds that 7% share many times over, while most other countries never come close to using their allotted 7%. The result is a queue that grows every year for India specifically, even in years when the system runs close to its overall numerical limit. Between fiscal years 2020 and 2024, about 980,460 employment-based green cards were issued — roughly 280,000 more than the standard annual allocation, largely recaptured from unused family-sponsored visas — and the backlog still grew.

Processing delays compound the wait before a petition even enters the green card queue. As of August 2026, Department of Labor data show the PERM labor certification step — required before most employment-based petitions can be filed — takes an average of 403 days for initial analyst review and 290 days for cases selected for audit.

What the wait actually does to a life

Atal Agarwal's path was typical of thousands of others: an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, a graduate program at UC Santa Barbara, then an H-1B sponsored by his employer, Businessolver. Under that visa, quitting his job would have given him 60 days to find a new sponsor or leave the country — with no legal way to start his own company in the meantime. "I felt chained," he said. "Every day I felt like my dreams were being crushed." In 2024, he quit and moved back to India.

Agarwal left the backlog voluntarily. Most people in it do not. NFAP's Executive Director, Stuart Anderson, put the practical consequence plainly: "These long waiting times for green cards create significant hardships for individuals and their families," limiting people's ability to change jobs, start businesses, or plan their lives on anything but a decades-long tentative basis, tied to a single employer for as long as they hope to eventually become a permanent resident.

The children caught in a queue they never chose

The backlog does not just strand workers — it strands their children, who legally age out of dependent status the day they turn 21, regardless of how long their family has already waited. Advocates call them "Documented Dreamers": young people who grew up in the US on a parent's valid visa, attended American schools, and then lose their legal status in their twenties simply because the queue moved too slowly.

A bipartisan bill, the America's Children Act (S. 2886 in the Senate, introduced by Alex Padilla and Rand Paul; H.R. 5528 in the House, introduced by Deborah Ross and Mariannette Miller-Meeks), was introduced in September 2025 to let roughly 250,000 of these young people stay in the US and eventually get permanent status, provided they have at least 10 years of lawful US presence — including 8 as a dependent child of an employment-visa holder — and a degree from a US institution. As of this writing, the bill has cosponsors in both chambers but has not received a committee vote.

The fix that keeps not happening

The most direct solution — eliminating the 7% per-country cap for employment-based green cards — has been proposed in Congress repeatedly since at least 2019, under various names including the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act and, most recently, the EAGLE Act. A House version passed by a 365-65 vote in 2019; a Senate version passed by voice vote in 2020. They were never reconciled, and the bill died at the end of that Congress.

It has been reintroduced every Congress since, including a Senate companion effort from Senators John Hickenlooper and Kevin Cramer to phase out the employment-based per-country caps. As of a September 12, 2026 status check, neither bill had received a committee markup or floor vote since at least May 2026. The 7% caps remain fully in effect for both employment-based and family-sponsored categories. No vote is currently scheduled.

A number that is not current, but is a warning

In 2023, a widely cited Cato Institute study by David J. Bier estimated that roughly 424,000 employment-based green card applicants — more than 90% of them Indian — would die before ever receiving their green card, based on the backlog size and processing pace at that time. That figure is now more than two years old and has not been formally updated by Cato since, so it should be read as a 2023 snapshot, not a current count. But the backlog has grown by over 20% since 2020 and India's share of it has only hardened, so there is no indication the underlying dynamic the study described has improved.

Frequently asked questions

Is the 179-year wait real, or an exaggeration?

It is a projection, not a guarantee, calculated by the National Foundation for American Policy from the current backlog size and recent visa issuance rates for Indian nationals filing new EB-2 petitions from January 2026 onward. It assumes no change to current law or visa allocation. It could shorten if Congress changes the per-country cap, or lengthen further if the backlog keeps growing as it has since 2020.

Why does this mainly affect Indian nationals and not other countries?

Because every country is capped at the same 7% share of green cards in a category, regardless of population or how many of that country's nationals are sponsored by US employers. India sends a disproportionately large number of employer-sponsored petitions relative to its 7% allotment, so its backlog grows every year while most countries never use their full share.

Can affected workers change jobs while waiting?

It depends on their underlying visa status and how long their green card petition has been pending, but many remain tied closely to a single sponsoring employer for years at a time, which advocates say limits career mobility, business formation, and job negotiation.

What happens to the children of people stuck in this backlog?

They lose their legal dependent status at age 21 unless they qualify for a different visa category, even if they have lived in the US their entire lives. The bipartisan America's Children Act, introduced in September 2025, would let an estimated 250,000 of these young people obtain legal status, but it has not yet passed either chamber of Congress.

Is Congress doing anything to fix the per-country cap?

Bills to eliminate or raise the per-country cap have been introduced in nearly every Congress since 2019, most recently as the EAGLE Act and a Senate companion from Senators Hickenlooper and Cramer. None has passed both chambers, and as of September 2026 neither had received a floor vote or committee markup that year.

This article is for information only and is not legal or immigration advice. Individuals with pending employment-based petitions should consult a qualified immigration attorney about their specific case and options.