Family members of immigrants to gain legal entry into the U.S. take 12 years:

Family-based petitions into two categories:

  1. There are no caps for spouses, unmarried minor children, or parents of U.S. citizens. In these cases, the wait can take up to a year, but this is short by comparison with family sponsorship for family members of green card holders.
  2. The government caps the number of visas available to relatives of permanent legal residents, and to non-immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. Normally, no one country is allowed more than 15,820 family-preference visas per year. In 2004, 226,000 visas will be available to family members in the capped categories. But many, many more people will be applying for visas, and the real travesty is that not all visa slots are even taken. Some 60,000 available visas go to waste each year, as people wait to get in, simply because the Dept. of Homeland Security can't keep up.

 

  • Roughly 2.4 million people are on the family waiting. That number is a starting point and doesn't include the applications being processed by federal immigration officials in the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Department of Homeland Security officials say the reason for the backlog is simple: Demand for visas in these categories exceeds the supply.
  • "There are limitations to the number of immigrants that can come in from each country in any year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "We have no leeway in assigning any limits."

The vast majority of immigrant visas, commonly referred to as "green cards," are awarded through a handful of pathways:

  • American employers can sponsor a foreign-born employee for legal permanent residence. The State Department says about 203,000 employment-based immigrant visas will be available this fiscal year.
  • Some people seeking refuge from persecution can obtain green cards as refugee or asylum applicants.
  • Fifty thousand people from countries with traditionally low rates of immigration to the United States are eligible through an annual "diversity lottery." In recent years, people from Africa and Europe have benefited most.

For family-based petitions, the government divides relatives into two categories:

  • There are no caps on spouses, unmarried minor children and parents of American citizens. The wait in these cases is reasonably short, though the application process can take up to a year.
  • The government does cap the number of visas available to other relatives of U.S. citizens and to relatives of permanent legal residents.

This year, 226,000 green cards will be available to people in these categories, the State Department said. In general, no one country is allowed more than 15,820 family-preference visas annually.

  • People from the Philippines, Mexico and India experience the longest waits in these categories.
  • Over time, immigrants in the United States from those three countries have filed more visa petitions than those from any other country, significantly outpacing the fixed quotas. The result: Extra-long wait times.
  • Despite the millions of people waiting for immigrant visas, not all of the available family visas are used every year because of processing backlogs.
  • State Department, estimated that 60,000 family visas went unfilled last year because Department of Homeland Security application processing has been slowed by new security checks.
  • All of the different checks create additional processing time. That can reduce the number of cases that are ultimately processed to conclusion.
  • As the backlog grows and waits increase, some immigrant advocates argue that the system encourages illegal immigration.

 

A bill in Congress by Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., would make additional visas available to backlogged family categories, and would remove the caps on spouses and minor children of green card holders.

Many lawmakers acknowledge that major immigration reform bills have little chance of passage during this presidential election year. Besides, proposals that would increase the number of available visas face steep opposition from certain politicians and from immigration-control groups.

Diana Hull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization, said family-sponsored immigration should be limited to spouses and minor children.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., proposes, at the very least, to eliminate the category that gives brothers and sisters of adult citizens the opportunity to immigrate.