Records of Employment-Based Green Card Issuances to China and India, 2000-2018
This article compiles data from U.S. Department of State visa reports for fiscal years 2000–2018, showing green card issuances and shares for China and India in EB1–EB5 employment-based categories. It compares trends: India's EB1 surged after 2012, while EB2 and EB3 dropped sharply after 2008; China's EB5 rose rapidly after 2012, with its five-year average exceeding other employment categories.
Prompted by discussion of how the HR 1044 bill would affect green card backlogs for China and India, the original author looked into the two countries' employment-based immigrant approval records and found that the actual situation differs greatly from the immigration law's rule that no single country may receive more than 7 percent. The author already knew that unused quotas in one category are reallocated to other categories in a specific order, but did not expect this reallocation to have such a large effect on the data.
The data below is compiled from the Department of State Visa Office's annual reports for fiscal years 2000 through 2018; the original reports are archived here . In all tables, China's "share" means the number of visas issued to China in that category as a percentage of the worldwide total for the category; India's "share" means the number issued to India in that category as a percentage of the worldwide total for the category; and the global "share of EB" means that category's share of total issuances across all employment-based categories worldwide.
EB1 Green Card Issuance Data for China and India
| Fiscal Year | China | Share | India | Share | Worldwide | Share of EB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 4,103 | 14% | 2,457 | 8% | 29,042 | 26% |
| 2001 | 6,482 | 15% | 3,543 | 8% | 42,997 | 23% |
| 2002 | 4,239 | 12% | 2,820 | 8% | 33,922 | 20% |
| 2003 | 1,654 | 11% | 1,266 | 9% | 14,700 | 18% |
| 2004 | 3,939 | 13% | 2,998 | 10% | 31,140 | 20% |
| 2005 | 6,422 | 10% | 6,336 | 10% | 66,344 | 27% |
| 2006 | 3,278 | 9% | 3,156 | 8% | 37,489 | 28% |
| 2007 | 2,982 | 11% | 2,855 | 11% | 26,806 | 17% |
| 2008 | 5,602 | 15% | 5,326 | 15% | 36,584 | 22% |
| 2009 | 4,999 | 12% | 6,672 | 16% | 40,976 | 29% |
| 2010 | 6,741 | 16% | 6,741 | 16% | 41,026 | 27% |
| 2011 | 3,940 | 16% | 4,563 | 18% | 25,229 | 18% |
| 2012 | 6,183 | 16% | 9,506 | 24% | 39,387 | 27% |
| 2013 | 6,249 | 16% | 9,640 | 25% | 39,058 | 24% |
| 2014 | 6,167 | 15% | 12,978 | 32% | 40,608 | 27% |
| 2015 | 6,239 | 15% | 12,253 | 29% | 41,990 | 29% |
| 2016 | 6,711 | 15% | 10,985 | 25% | 43,723 | 31% |
| 2017 | 6,337 | 15% | 13,082 | 31% | 41,828 | 30% |
| 2018 | 6,588 | 17% | 10,967 | 28% | 39,521 | 28% |
| First 10-Year Average | 4,370 | 12% | 3,743 | 10% | 36,000 | 23% |
| Last 10-Year Average | 6,015 | 15% | 9,739 | 25% | 39,335 | 27% |
| Past 5-Year Average | 6,407 | 15% | 12,053 | 29% | 41,534 | 29% |
| Past 19-Year Average | 5,203 | 14% | 6,744 | 18% | 37,493 | 25% |
| Past 19-Year Total | 98,849 | 14% | 128,144 | 18% | 712,370 | 25% |
Over the previous 10 years, EB1 numbers for China and India were roughly comparable; since 2012, India's EB1 numbers have risen sharply.
EB2 Green Card Issuance Data for China and India
| Fiscal Year | China | Share | India | Share | Worldwide | Share of EB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 6,459 | 31% | 7,346 | 35% | 20,932 | 19% |
| 2001 | 11,666 | 26% | 21,355 | 48% | 44,949 | 24% |
| 2002 | 10,518 | 24% | 21,310 | 49% | 43,390 | 25% |
| 2003 | 2,613 | 17% | 8,536 | 55% | 15,604 | 19% |
| 2004 | 6,686 | 20% | 16,262 | 50% | 32,711 | 21% |
| 2005 | 9,346 | 22% | 16,687 | 38% | 43,412 | 18% |
| 2006 | 3,344 | 15% | 3,719 | 17% | 22,425 | 17% |
| 2007 | 6,797 | 15% | 6,203 | 14% | 44,400 | 29% |
| 2008 | 6,955 | 10% | 14,806 | 21% | 70,099 | 43% |
| 2009 | 3,045 | 7% | 10,106 | 22% | 46,016 | 33% |
| 2010 | 6,505 | 12% | 19,961 | 37% | 53,872 | 36% |
| 2011 | 8,257 | 12% | 23,997 | 36% | 66,804 | 48% |
| 2012 | 5,858 | 12% | 19,726 | 39% | 50,593 | 35% |
| 2013 | 3,627 | 6% | 17,193 | 27% | 63,461 | 39% |
| 2014 | 3,561 | 7% | 23,527 | 48% | 49,071 | 32% |
| 2015 | 4,202 | 9% | 7,235 | 16% | 44,479 | 31% |
| 2016 | 2,837 | 7% | 3,930 | 10% | 39,111 | 28% |
| 2017 | 2,559 | 6% | 2,879 | 7% | 39,961 | 29% |
| 2018 | 2,681 | 7% | 4,096 | 10% | 40,641 | 29% |
| First 10-Year Average | 6,743 | 18% | 12,633 | 33% | 38,394 | 25% |
| Last 10-Year Average | 4,313 | 9% | 13,265 | 27% | 49,401 | 34% |
| Past 5-Year Average | 3,168 | 7% | 8,333 | 20% | 42,653 | 30% |
| Past 19-Year Average | 5,659 | 13% | 13,099 | 30% | 43,786 | 29% |
| Past 19-Year Total | 107,516 | 13% | 248,874 | 30% | 831,931 | 29% |
In recent years, EB2 issuances have declined for both India and China, with India's drop especially steep because its earlier base was so high.
EB3 Green Card Issuance Data for China and India
| Fiscal Year | China | Share | India | Share | Worldwide | Share of EB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 3,488 | 7% | 5,567 | 11% | 51,711 | 47% |
| 2001 | 4,898 | 5% | 16,405 | 18% | 90,274 | 48% |
| 2002 | 4,908 | 6% | 17,428 | 20% | 87,574 | 51% |
| 2003 | 3,485 | 7% | 10,680 | 23% | 47,354 | 57% |
| 2004 | 4,733 | 5% | 19,962 | 23% | 88,114 | 56% |
| 2005 | 4,998 | 4% | 23,399 | 19% | 122,130 | 50% |
| 2006 | 2,739 | 4% | 3,177 | 5% | 63,345 | 47% |
| 2007 | 3,681 | 5% | 17,985 | 25% | 72,574 | 47% |
| 2008 | 2,057 | 4% | 3,745 | 8% | 47,165 | 29% |
| 2009 | 1,077 | 3% | 2,304 | 6% | 39,778 | 28% |
| 2010 | 3,676 | 9% | 3,036 | 7% | 42,431 | 28% |
| 2011 | 2,542 | 7% | 4,002 | 11% | 37,425 | 27% |
| 2012 | 2,827 | 7% | 2,804 | 7% | 39,549 | 27% |
| 2013 | 3,229 | 7% | 7,816 | 18% | 43,740 | 27% |
| 2014 | 3,676 | 9% | 3,526 | 8% | 42,699 | 28% |
| 2015 | 3,211 | 9% | 7,026 | 19% | 37,450 | 26% |
| 2016 | 2,815 | 7% | 4,617 | 12% | 37,540 | 27% |
| 2017 | 2,524 | 7% | 6,641 | 18% | 37,770 | 27% |
| 2018 | 4,392 | 11% | 6,112 | 15% | 39,966 | 29% |
| First 10-Year Average | 3,606 | 5% | 12,065 | 17% | 71,002 | 46% |
| Last 10-Year Average | 2,997 | 8% | 4,788 | 12% | 39,835 | 27% |
| Past 5-Year Average | 3,324 | 9% | 5,584 | 14% | 39,085 | 27% |
| Past 19-Year Average | 3,419 | 6% | 8,749 | 16% | 56,242 | 37% |
| Past 19-Year Total | 64,956 | 6% | 166,232 | 16% | 1,068,589 | 37% |
Over the past nineteen years, China's EB3 issuances have stayed broadly stable with only a slight decline, while India's fell sharply after 2008 because its earlier base was simply too large.
EB5 Green Card Issuance Record for China
| Fiscal Year | China | Share | Worldwide | Share of EB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 42 | 18% | 231 | 0.21% |
| 2001 | 32 | 17% | 188 | 0.10% |
| 2002 | 30 | 20% | 147 | 0.09% |
| 2003 | 29 | 41% | 71 | 0.09% |
| 2004 | 16 | 13% | 126 | 0.08% |
| 2005 | 44 | 13% | 349 | 0.14% |
| 2006 | 96 | 12% | 802 | 0.60% |
| 2007 | 110 | 14% | 793 | 0.51% |
| 2008 | 360 | 25% | 1,443 | 0.89% |
| 2009 | 1,979 | 47% | 4,218 | 2.99% |
| 2010 | 772 | 41% | 1,885 | 1.25% |
| 2011 | 2,408 | 70% | 3,463 | 2.49% |
| 2012 | 6,124 | 80% | 7,640 | 5.28% |
| 2013 | 6,895 | 81% | 8,564 | 5.31% |
| 2014 | 9,128 | 85% | 10,692 | 7.06% |
| 2015 | 8,156 | 84% | 9,764 | 6.78% |
| 2016 | 7,516 | 76% | 9,947 | 7.09% |
| 2017 | 7,567 | 75% | 10,090 | 7.23% |
| 2018 | 4,642 | 48% | 9,602 | 6.88% |
| First 10-Year Average | 274 | 33% | 837 | 0.54% |
| Last 10-Year Average | 5,519 | 73% | 7,587 | 5.23% |
| Past 5-Year Average | 7,402 | 74% | 10,019 | 7.01% |
| Past 19-Year Average | 2,945 | 70% | 4,211 | 2.80% |
| Past 19-Year Total | 55,946 | 70% | 80,015 | 2.80% |
EB5 did not gain real momentum until after 2008, and it is unclear whether this was related to the financial crisis; the program was sustained almost entirely by Chinese applicants, who accounted for more than 70% of the global total!
Employment-Based Immigrant Issuance Records for China and India, All Categories
| Fiscal Year | Worldwide | China | Share | India | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 111,166 | 14,151 | 13% | 15,888 | 14% |
| 2001 | 186,536 | 23,142 | 12% | 41,720 | 22% |
| 2002 | 171,583 | 19,736 | 12% | 41,919 | 24% |
| 2003 | 83,020 | 7,827 | 9% | 20,818 | 25% |
| 2004 | 157,107 | 15,407 | 10% | 39,496 | 25% |
| 2005 | 242,335 | 20,928 | 9% | 47,160 | 19% |
| 2006 | 133,622 | 9,555 | 7% | 10,682 | 8% |
| 2007 | 154,497 | 13,615 | 9% | 27,419 | 18% |
| 2008 | 162,949 | 15,067 | 9% | 24,357 | 15% |
| 2009 | 140,987 | 11,191 | 8% | 19,925 | 14% |
| 2010 | 150,262 | 17,792 | 12% | 30,624 | 20% |
| 2011 | 139,302 | 17,225 | 12% | 33,043 | 24% |
| 2012 | 144,647 | 21,109 | 15% | 32,712 | 23% |
| 2013 | 161,269 | 20,078 | 12% | 35,298 | 22% |
| 2014 | 151,359 | 22,641 | 15% | 40,859 | 27% |
| 2015 | 143,952 | 21,889 | 15% | 27,334 | 19% |
| 2016 | 140,350 | 19,986 | 14% | 20,401 | 15% |
| 2017 | 139,604 | 19,103 | 14% | 23,566 | 17% |
| 2018 | 139,488 | 18,455 | 13% | 22,524 | 16% |
| First 10-Year Average | 154,380 | 15,062 | 10% | 28,938 | 19% |
| Last 10-Year Average | 145,122 | 18,947 | 13% | 28,629 | 20% |
| Past 5-Year Average | 142,950 | 20,415 | 14% | 26,937 | 19% |
| Past 19-Year Average | 150,212 | 17,310 | 12% | 29,250 | 19% |
| Past 19-Year Total | 2,854,030 | 328,897 | 12% | 555,745 | 19% |
India has consistently received more employment-based immigrant visas than China, but over the most recent five years the gap has narrowed substantially. The author attributes this to EB5.
Issuance Records for China by Employment-Based Category
- Over the past 19 years, China's EB1 issuances have risen and fallen but have generally remained within the same order of magnitude.
- EB2 has generally trended downward, with a relatively large decline.
- EB3 has likewise trended downward overall, but by a smaller margin.
- EB5 has grown rapidly since 2012, averaging 7,402 issuances over the past 5 years, far exceeding EB1/2/3, and is the category with the largest number of Chinese employment-based immigrants!
