Why does the application process for a legal work visa take years?

"Each approved visa petition is placed in chronological order according to the date the visa petitioin was filed. The date the visa petition was filed is known as your priority date. The State Department publishes a bulletin that shows the month and year of the visa petitions they are working on by country and preference category (see eligibility information above). You can estimate of the amount of time it will take to get an immigrant visa number by comparing your priority date with the date listed in the bulletin. For instance, suppose you look under your country and preference category, and see that the State Department is working on applications they received in May 1996. If your priority date is May 1998, then you may have to wait several more years for an immigrant visa number to become available."

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
http://www.uscis.gov/

mtpizzo2006-11-14T08:52:19Z

Favorite Answer

All these answers are all wrong.

The law allows only for a limited amount of visas to be issued each year.

For example, it allows for 24,000 F4 visas every year. A F4 is an immigrant visa which is issued to brothers and sisters of U.S. Citizens. Right now, there is about a ten year wait.

Why is there a 10 year wait? Because more than 250,000 people are currently in line for a visa!

For a visa category which does not have a limitation, such as spouse of a U.S. Citizen, the processing time is usually less than three months.

barren2016-11-25T00:04:00Z

Marra, A student visa has both an expiration date or that's stamped D/S meaning length of stay. The length is constrained to the time he's an energetic student in reliable status. After that is performed, both he has complete interpreting or dropped out of faculty, he's "out of prestige." that is diverse from being unlawful, when you consider that an out of prestige concentrated visitor can regulate prestige, i.e., through marriage to a US citizen, while an unlawful, that is someone who entered the U. S. without inspection (EWI), can't. someone is eligible to practice for US citizenship, after having been a lawful everlasting resident for a minimum of 5 years (3 if nonetheless married to the petitioning major different). yet your husband continues to be a concentrated visitor, not a resident. subsequently, think ofyou've got to petition for his Adjustment of prestige through USCIS sorts I-one hundred thirty, I-485, and that i-765. the fee is $a million,010 and all of it takes everywhere from 6 to ten months. Your husband can't depart the country till the AOS petition is determined upon. If he overstayed, the prompt he leaves the U. S. a three or 10 3 hundred and sixty 5 days ban will be prompted, combating him from coming back. After the AOS petition has been approved, he receives his eco-friendly Card. it fairly is the first day he turns right into a lawful everlasting resident. 5 or 3 years later he can practice for citizenship.

Anonymous2006-11-14T05:53:53Z

There's only so many people working at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and they can only process so many applications per day. To hire those people to process the applications takes money and there's only so much money that the government can spend on that and EVERYTHING else.
There's inconveniences every where. There's cover charges at bars, prerequisites to get into college and there's background checks to become an American.

cartman2006-11-14T05:57:52Z

Because millions of foreigners file for citizenship each year, our govt has to do thorough background checks and it takes time. I think the ratio of immigrants to govt workers in this dept is something like 1200:1. If you want to help speed up the process, get a govt job to help with the load.

humm2006-11-14T06:43:41Z

Not having enough manpower to process millions wanting to work and live in the US quickly, is a good explanation.

Consider this, if a city has one million homes and limited funds and 50 million people want to live and work in that city, if you were in charge, what would you do? Would you scrutinize the applicant's or just say "come on down"?

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