I am Current, when will I get my green card

In FY 2010, 19,961 green cards were given for folks under EB2 - India category. In FY 2009, it was 10,106 and in FY 2008 it was 14,806.

For this year, let us take the higher end and keep it as 20,000. Let us assume there are 1500 applications every month under EB2 India category. The fiscal year started with 15 Apr 2007 as priority date. Given this, folks will get GC for priority date in next 13 months (20,000/1500). Normally, about 10%, say 2000 were consular processing cases. This gives a number of about 12 months. So, by end of September 2012, my guesstimate is folks with 15 Apr 2008 or earlier will get their green card through EB2 India category.

This has lot of assumptions -- spillover data from EB4, EB5, EB1 and EB2 ROW -- to give the 20000 number; number of consular processing cases and number of cases per month. Depending on these numbers, the priority date movement will vary. It will be a good news, if more folks with later priority dates, get their green card by 30 September 2012.

We have to wait and watch :)

The above numbers will become more concrete after we get the next set of I-485 inventory data from USCIS and the FY 2011 visa statistics report from U.S. Department of State.

To give a perspective, in July 2007 and August 2007, all the categories were made current to have a pipeline of cases. Folks who applied for I-485 during that period are still waiting for green card. It will be the same this time as well. All USCIS is doing now, is making the pipeline ready -- getting I-485 applications so that, they can do the FBI name check, ask folks to go and do finger printing, check all the documents and send RFEs if required and so on. This way if the demand is actually low or new laws come in place, they don't have to waste any numbers, when it comes to end of fiscal year -- 30 Sept 2012. USCIS has been very good in maintaining the numbers for the last few years.

To view the Visa Statistics by U.S. Department of State -- Click Here