A Green Card issuance target for USCIS: 280,000 by September 30, 2022

News Highlights:

• The USCIS has to issue 280,000 Green Cards by September 30, 2022.
• The COVID-19 affected the US immigration process, creating a large number of Green Cards to remain pending.
• The US is attempting to issue all available visas by the end of this fiscal year.

The USCIS has a busy task at hand. It has to issue 280,000 pending Green Cards before the end of September 2022. This is when the fiscal year ends in the USA. So, this is a great opportunity for Green Card aspirants to move to the USA.

High number of employment-based Green Cards

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lots of US embassies and consular offices were either closed or were working with limited capacity. This led to a high number of employment-based Green Cards available for issuance and as of mid-June 2022. USCIS as well as the Department of State had used significantly higher number of visas compared to the same point of time in financial year 2021.

Through May 31, 2022, both agencies have together 149,733 employment-based immigrant visas to issue.

In fact, data collected from the US visa office shows that the US government had 66,781 employment-based Green Cards to issue in the 2021 fiscal year. This was when there were 1.4 million immigrants were waiting for it. The reason was them being stuck in the backlog for years for the issuance of Green Card.

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Processing time for employer-sponsored green cards rises

In 2021, USCIS issued 180,000 Green Cards. This was more than a typical year, yet it was lesser than the total available for issuance.

As per reports, the processing time for employer-sponsored Green Cards went beyond 3 years of waiting time in 2022.

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Green Card issuance as of 2022

If you want to get Green Card applications processed fasted by a minimum of 7 months, you need to pay a fee of $2,500. In this case you will get a Green Card decision in 2 years and 5 months.

The US government has added close to 16 months to the average processing time for a Green Card since 2016. In this, more than a year was added in the years 2021 and 2022 alone.

If you are willing to migrate to USA, talk to Y-Axis, the leading immigration and career consultant in the UAE.

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