Backlog: Every year there's a finite amount of green cards available, and a rule that says: a country can not claim more than 7% of all the green cards each ye

Backlog: Every year there's a finite amount of green cards available, and a rule that says: a country can not claim more than 7% of all the green cards each year. So every year the max number of Indians that can get green card is the same as the max number of Portuguese, but India has 100x the population of Portugal, so if in proportion to their population, as many Indians applies for green card as Portuguese, the Portuguese have a much higher chance of getting it approved this year The Indians who didn't get it because of reaching that 7% are added to a backlog. The following year, the same thing is repeated, but now in addition, you have all the people in the backlog, ... Repeat that many years, and now the backlog is more than a decade long: people who applied for the Green card a decade ago are still waiting.