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So, to your best knowledge, these are the queues for the wannabe immigrants? Like anyone who wants to immigrate can go ahead and join one of these; is that how

So, to your best knowledge, these are the queues for the wannabe immigrants? Like anyone who wants to immigrate can go ahead and join one of these; is that how it works?

screye 5y ago
Queues are country specific, and wait times are estimated from processing speeds of applications per country. India is the worst hit with 10-100 year wait times. (yeah, the estimates vary drastically between govts. It was a crawl for the last 10 years, but has picked up in 2021) China and Mexico also suffer a bit, but it is not as bad. Every other country has zero waititimes, so it takes about 3 years to get the rest of the red rape out of the way.
listenallyall 5y ago
Not just anyone. The F categories are only for applicants with a family connection to an existing U.S. citizen or green card holder, as detailed in each category's title. I'd suggest the best source to get your questions answered is not a random comment thread, but the US State Dept's Visa Bulletin, which the Boundless article links to.
- olliej 5y ago
  If you can’t trust people commenting about immigration law on HN, who can you trust? :) Joking aside, there are many many people on HN who have gone through the naturalization process so their experience is a reasonable source for approximate waiting times. Obviously INS will have the official estimates but in my experience those were off by quite a bit.
- georgecmu 5y ago
  Thank you for your suggestion. The reason I asked these questions is that I wanted to understand the mental model of the US immigration process, within the constraints of which statements like "the entire point of the program is to skirt the normal waiting process and buy their way to the front of the line for citizenship" would make sense. As we seem to agree, there is no such thing as "the normal waiting process", so there's really nothing "to skirt" or "to buy their way to the front of". In fact, presently, in the US there is absolutely no 'pathway to citizenship', 'normal waiting process', or 'legal immigration pathway' in the general sense -- in the way that it existed in the US prior to 1920s. Diversity visa lottery comes the closest to that, making 55,000 visas per year available to 10+ million applicants from 'underrepresented countries' -- the list of which among others explicitly excludes China, India, and Mexico. To have a realistic shot at legal immigration, the wannabe immigrant, unless he/she qualifies as a refugee, must either (F) have a close family relationship with a US citizen OR (EB) satisfy requirements for an employment-based visa. Both F and EB immigration categories have multiple subcategories, each in turn subject to quotas and subquotas based on country of origin (typically, China, India, Mexico, Philippines, and the RestOfTheWorld). So, if you're an Indian national in the EB-3 category (which means that you have jumped through a bunch of hoops already: you have at least a Bachelor degree or equivalent, you have won the H-1B lottery and your application was approved, and your greencard is getting sponsored by your employer), you'll have no hope of actually getting your greencard in any reasonable amount of time. Instead, all that's left for you is to get upset with a whole lot of people 'skirting the process': F2A spouses of US citizens (how dare they marry their way to the front of the line?!), EB-1 extraordinary people, outstanding researchers, and managers (how dare they achieve their way to the front of the line?!), and EB-5 investors (how dare they buy their way to the front of the line?!). Which is still a fundamentally wrong way to think about it, even if the system is fundamentally illogical, ineffective, and unfair.

So, to your best knowledge, these are the queues for the wannabe immigrants? Like anyone who wants to immigrate can go ahead and join one of these; is that how it works?

screye 5y ago

Queues are country specific, and wait times are estimated from processing speeds of applications per country. India is the worst hit with 10-100 year wait times. (yeah, the estimates vary drastically between govts. It was a crawl for the last 10 years, but has picked up in 2021) China and Mexico also suffer a bit, but it is not as bad. Every other country has zero waititimes, so it takes about 3 years to get the rest of the red rape out of the way.

listenallyall 5y ago

Not just anyone. The F categories are only for applicants with a family connection to an existing U.S. citizen or green card holder, as detailed in each category's title. I'd suggest the best source to get your questions answered is not a random comment thread, but the US State Dept's Visa Bulletin, which the Boundless article links to.

olliej 5y ago
If you can’t trust people commenting about immigration law on HN, who can you trust? :) Joking aside, there are many many people on HN who have gone through the naturalization process so their experience is a reasonable source for approximate waiting times. Obviously INS will have the official estimates but in my experience those were off by quite a bit.
georgecmu 5y ago
Thank you for your suggestion. The reason I asked these questions is that I wanted to understand the mental model of the US immigration process, within the constraints of which statements like "the entire point of the program is to skirt the normal waiting process and buy their way to the front of the line for citizenship" would make sense. As we seem to agree, there is no such thing as "the normal waiting process", so there's really nothing "to skirt" or "to buy their way to the front of". In fact, presently, in the US there is absolutely no 'pathway to citizenship', 'normal waiting process', or 'legal immigration pathway' in the general sense -- in the way that it existed in the US prior to 1920s. Diversity visa lottery comes the closest to that, making 55,000 visas per year available to 10+ million applicants from 'underrepresented countries' -- the list of which among others explicitly excludes China, India, and Mexico. To have a realistic shot at legal immigration, the wannabe immigrant, unless he/she qualifies as a refugee, must either (F) have a close family relationship with a US citizen OR (EB) satisfy requirements for an employment-based visa. Both F and EB immigration categories have multiple subcategories, each in turn subject to quotas and subquotas based on country of origin (typically, China, India, Mexico, Philippines, and the RestOfTheWorld). So, if you're an Indian national in the EB-3 category (which means that you have jumped through a bunch of hoops already: you have at least a Bachelor degree or equivalent, you have won the H-1B lottery and your application was approved, and your greencard is getting sponsored by your employer), you'll have no hope of actually getting your greencard in any reasonable amount of time. Instead, all that's left for you is to get upset with a whole lot of people 'skirting the process': F2A spouses of US citizens (how dare they marry their way to the front of the line?!), EB-1 extraordinary people, outstanding researchers, and managers (how dare they achieve their way to the front of the line?!), and EB-5 investors (how dare they buy their way to the front of the line?!). Which is still a fundamentally wrong way to think about it, even if the system is fundamentally illogical, ineffective, and unfair.