How Long Does it Take to Get Green Card in US- 1 to 9 Years

Interesting set of questions about Green Card process. Process to get Green Card in US is lengthy and time consuming.  Green card process depends on person to person.
One can get Green card under different categories. Majority of the Green Card is issued through Employment Based or Family Based Category. For this article  we will consider Employment Based  Category. 

Green Card Categories
Every year 140,000 applicants are given US green card in employment based categories. Within that 140,000, each country can have cap, which is 7% of 140,000 green card (9,800).
They are further divided into five categories  as follows

1. EB-1 Priority Workers
2. EB-2 Professionals with advanced degrees or persons with exceptional ability
3. EB-3 Skilled or professional workers
4. EB-4 Special Immigrants
5. EB-5 Investors (Employment Creation)

How Long to Get Green Card

According to May Visa Bulletin

Month/Year	India EB1	India EB2	India EB3	China EB1	China EB2	China EB3
May 2010	Current	01FEB05	01Oct01	Current	22AUG05	22APR03

Above table shows the priority dates for EB1, EB2 and EB3 categories for India and China.  If you apply for Green card in EB1 Category, you can get it in GC in about 1 year. For EB-2 Green Card submitted on February01, 2005 is being processed and for EB2 It’s October 01, 2001 (thats about 8 to 9 years to get Green Card)

Example Processing Time EB3

• Start Masters Degree from Fall 2010
• Complete Masters in Summer 2012 ( 2 years)
• Employer apply for your Green Card in 2015 in EB3
• Add 9 more years to the wait time from 2015
• You can expect to get US Permanent Residency in 2024

Above case is an example. There are many factors that influence the processing time and your application.  But, this article should have given an overview of the process and processing time.


source:  http://www.happyschoolsblog.com/us-green-card-how-long-employment-based/