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New USCIS figures as of June 2026 put 356,360 approved petitions for Indian-born workers in the EB-2 backlog, about 91 percent of the category’s entire queue.
The EB-2 backlog is now almost entirely an Indian backlog. USCIS data as of June 2026 count 391,296 approved advanced-degree petitions waiting for a green card number, and 356,360 of them, about 91.1 percent, belong to people born in India, according to the Indo-Asian News Service, which reported the figures on Nov. 1. China accounts for the remaining 34,936. For the workers in that line, many of them on H-1B visas, the number explains why the wait is measured in decades and why every proposed change to their temporary status lands so hard.
The new count updates the December 2025 petition data behind the 179-year wait estimate that circulated in October. That estimate came from a research group that modeled spouses and children. The June figures do not. USCIS counts only principal beneficiaries, so the real number of people waiting is considerably larger, and the agency cautions that the report can include more than one petition for the same person, according to IANS.
| Category | All countries | Born in India | India’s share |
|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 (priority workers) | 31,962 | 17,861 | about 56% |
| EB-2 (advanced degree) | 391,296 | 356,360 | about 91% |
| EB-3 (skilled workers, professionals) | 147,492 | 106,214 | about 72% |
| All employment categories (I-140, I-360, I-526) | 856,662 | 491,773 | about 57% |
Why the EB-2 backlog barely moves for India
The arithmetic is set by statute. EB-2 receives 28.6 percent of the 140,000 employment-based green cards each year, or 40,040, and the 7 percent per-country limit holds an oversubscribed country such as India to roughly 2,800 of them in a normal year. Spouses and children draw from that same allotment. At that pace, the 356,360 principal petitions alone represent more than 120 years of India’s EB-2 numbers, a calculation from the June count and the statutory limits. Attrition, duplicate filings and any spillover of unused numbers would shorten that; dependents would lengthen it.
The Visa Bulletin shows the same story from the other end. The October 2026 bulletin, the first of fiscal 2027, set India’s EB-2 final action date at Nov. 1, 2013, while applicants from most other countries faced a Jan. 1, 2025 cutoff. The November 2026 Visa Bulletin moved worldwide EB-2 forward but left Indian applicants far behind. IANS also noted that the State Department had earlier announced that India’s EB-2 per-country limit for fiscal 2026 had been reached, halting further India EB-2 issuances until Oct. 1.
The figures also dispel a common assumption that EB-3 is a reliable escape route. Indian-born workers hold about 72 percent of the approved EB-3 petitions waiting for numbers, so moving down a category usually means joining another long line rather than skipping one.
What a decades-long queue means this fall
An approved I-140 does not grant status. It lets an H-1B worker extend past the usual six-year limit in three-year increments under the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act, which is how many Indian workers in this line remain in the country while they wait. That makes the queue a multiplier for every renewal rule. A DHS proposal published Oct. 14 would end USCIS’s practice of deferring to earlier approvals when it reviews extensions, so each renewal would be judged afresh on its own evidence. Comments close Nov. 13. A separate proposal would eliminate the H-1B grace period after a job loss, and the Labor Department’s PERM suspension at eight large employers has already shut the first step of the process for some sponsors.
For a worker with a 2020s priority date, the practical effect is that the green card is no longer the realistic planning horizon; the next extension is. Only Congress can change the underlying math, either by raising the 140,000 ceiling it set in 1990 or by rewriting the per-country cap. The next USCIS update to this dataset will show whether the India EB-2 line kept growing in the second half of fiscal 2026, the likelier outcome as long as new Indian EB-2 approvals outpace the roughly 2,800 numbers available each year.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Indo-Asian News Service: Indians hold 91 pc of US EB-2 green card backlog: USCIS data (Nov. 1, 2026; USCIS data as of June 2026)
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Immigration and Citizenship Data
- U.S. Department of State: Visa Bulletin for October 2026
- Federal Register: Removing Deference to Prior USCIS Determinations of Eligibility (Oct. 14, 2026)
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