Green card waiting time calculator

Employment based green card application is a very long and draining process that uncle sam put up for foreigners, especially eb2 status holders from China, India etc., people like me who graduated from a US school with advanced degrees.

If your company submitted your green card application (485) after Mar. 2007 (yes, 4+ years ago), it’s likely you are still in the pool waiting for your priority date become current, which is critical and most time consuming steps to get the green card.

US government does not tell you if the process is slowing down or speeding up, or simply staying stale. But it does publish green card visa status here http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_1770.html, with no analysis, no forecast.

So, let’s do the job for government: analyze their data, and “forecast” how much longer one has to wait for his/her green card.

I compiled the data available from visa bulletin board, and found the average months advanced as each month elapse is 1.1 in 2010, and 1.3 in 2011, and tend to speed up from May to July, then stall. For example, July 2011, priority date advanced from Oct. 15, 2006 to Mar. 8, 2007, 4.8 months – fastest months in 4 years. Plug your priority date in the green cell below, the red cell will show you the number of months you will have to wait before your priority date become current, by my “estimate”. For example, say you submitted green application on May 31, 2008, yes, you have waited for more than 3 years for this freaking green card, and you will most likely have to wait for another 11.5 months before proceeding with the final steps of getting the green card.

On the other hand, if you submitted application in June, 2007, good news, you just need to wait for about 2.9 months before getting your green card!

That is after average 4+ years of wait.

How much life could have changed in 4 years? How much world has changed in the past 4 years!