Annual Statistics on Green Cards
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics has released its annual U.S. Permanent Residents: 2008 report. The report provides a summary of the approvals of the various types of legal permanent resident (LPR) petitions. According to the report, in 2008, a total of 1,107,126 persons became LPRs. Of these, 58% already lived in the U.S. (and adjusted status, Form I-485). Nearly 65% were granted LPR based on family relationship with a U.S. citizen or LPR. The leading countries were Mexico (17%), China (7%) and India (6%).
The report provides a very useful breakdown by category and year which allows us to analyze the trends in green card approvals. It is important to note that both 2007 and 2008 noted a slight decrease in the total number of green cards given. In 2006, DHS recorded 1,266,129 green cards. The decrease in 2008 is wholly attributed to a decrease in the family-based petitions. Despite this slight decrease, the numbers of green cards approved for each of the family-based categories remained fairly stable over the past three years.
The employment-based petitions in 2008 increased from 159,081 (2006) to 162,176 (2007) to 166,511 (2008). It is interesting to note that the number of EB-1 petitions remained stable, while the number of EB-2 green cards approved increased significantly, more than 3 times from 21,911 (2006) to 70,046 (2008). On the other hand, EB-2 recorded a significant decrease, from 89,922 (2006) and 85,030 (2007) to only 48,903 in 2008. What do these numbers mean? We think that they suggest a trend in that many applicants for green cards who are in EB-3 are, after many years of waiting, trying to upgrade and ultimately succeeding in obtaining their green cards approved under the EB-2 category.
