EB2 India Green Card Prediction for Jan 2023 Bulletin and beyond

Family spillover to employment is 60k GC in FY 2023.

This means a total of 200k GCs will be available for the employment-based category. This was supposed to be good news for Indians but USCIS has spoiled it by estimating that ROW (the rest of the world) is going to use all the numbers.

Many attorneys have been preparing to file a lawsuit too to challenge USCIS’s interpretation of giving away the full spillover to ROW instead of giving it to the most backlogged country which is Indian and China.

Also, USCIS officially says that thousands of i485 applications are still pending from 2010 to 2014:

• EB2 India: About 40k EB2 India i485 applications are still pending
• EB3 has about 25k i485 pending from 2012 to 2014.

We are not sure if the bulk of these pending applications are duplicates since most of the people filed downgrades to EB3 and then refiled in EB2 too. USCIS has not clarified this in the court filing.

Will EB2 India reach Dec 2014 by Sep 2023 bulletin?

The chances of EB2 India reaching 2014 are very low given that USCIS has taken the stance of equally distributing the spillover among all countries.

Unless any lawsuit changes this stance, Indians are in for a big shock.

We estimate that EB3 India will move forward while EB2 India will stay around 2011-2013 by the end of Sep 2023 now.

USCIS had told the court in 2022 that the dates for EB2 should not be retrogressed and will stay current if they were current in July 2022. But, they changed their stance suddenly in Sep 2022 court filing:

Will 60k new Family to Employment Spillover Help EB2 India?

Unfortunately, not in 2023 as USCIS is equally dividing the spillover GCs among all countries and applying the 7% cap.

USCIS has estimated that EB2 Indians will only get a total of about 4k GC in 2023. They are also estimating that EB1 India will also get a restricted date starting Jan 2023 bulletin.

This essentially means that the bull run for Indians has ended. The pre-covid speed of the visa bulletin is back sooner than estimated.

This spillover:

• The EB3 India should still move forward and may reach 2014 as per our estimation.
• EB2 India may still not see much movement as it has a high number of people already waiting in line.
• People with i485 pending in both EB3 and EB2 will benefit.

Predictions for 2023

Stay positive and hope for the best.

We estimate these dates to be possible in the next 12 bulletins:

Predictions – India – Final Action

• EB3
• EB2

If you have already filed your i485 but have not submitted the medicals, we strongly recommend interfiling the i693 form and improving your chances of getting a Green card earlier than others in the queue.

Our predictions are based on these numbers that we think are possible. You can estimate dates based on your own understanding too.

This app uses publicly available i140 data from USCIS and then mimics the per-month visa allocation based on various factors.

The employment spillovers happen in this order:

1. EB4 and EB5 extra green cards are given to EB1.
2. EB1’s unused GC numbers are given to EB2 ROW (The rest of the world).
3. EB2’s ROW is shared horizontally with backlogged countries like India and China. The most backlogged country gets the most GCs as per the best understanding.
4. EB3 ROW is supposed to get unused GC from EB2 which is almost impossible since EB2 India and China have huge backlogs.
5. EB3 does not spill over to anyone as per our understanding.

In a nutshell, this is the funnel for spillovers within employment-based categories:

• Unused EB4+EB5 ->
• EB1 ROW ->
• Unused EB1 ->
• EB2 ROW ->
• EB2 Backlogged (most backlogged first) ->
• EB3 ROW ->
• EB3 Backlogged (most backlogged first)

If you want to understand how this whole setup works, head over to the HappySchools blog who has explained spillover sharing details within EB categories in a really simple way.

Estimate My Green Card Date

You can estimate your own green card date based on the same AI algorithm which we use for predicting visa bulletins.

1. Visit the My Green Card Estimate App here.
2. Enter your country of birth and employment-based GC category. You can leave the options as default.
3. Click the ‘Estimate My GC Date‘ button and see the visa bulletin that may get you the Green card.

This is what the estimated values look like.

This will help you make a decision with respect to filing EB2 to EB3 downgrade and collecting documents for filing i485 if you have a good chance of getting current in the near future.

Many people would need the NABC (non-availability of birth certificate) to file the i-485 application and am22tech is helping with it for a small fee.

Use the coupon code DWHF5RQ6 to get a $29.99 discount on the am22tech’s NABC certificate service.

You should be ready to file i-485 documents if the dates move forward quickly as the window might not stay open for long.

How to Get a Green Card Fast?

Unless the US Immigration law is changed, to remove country-based GC limits with a law like S386, there is no real possibility of any Indian joining the EB2 Green card queue, to get a Green card in his/her lifetime.

#1 US Citizen Child Sponsor

To circumvent this 150-year wait, your Adult US citizen child can sponsor you once he/she turns 21.

This will give you a Green card immediately as there is neither any yearly limit nor any priority date waiting for immediate relatives of US citizens.

#2 EB2 to EB3 Downgrade

India EB2 to EB3 downgrades are possible.