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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Serious question: who sets the number of green cards allowed each year?  Is it the Congress or the Executive Branch?[/quote]

Green cards is not the thing that is limited. You are either eligible for a green card or not. The executive branch limits the amount of visas issued for all the different ways you can enter (other than tourism which isn't really limited). So executive branch limits # of refugees, # of H-1bs, # of H-2bs etc. Some statuses don't have limits, usually because they aren't used all the time like a K visa or a O visa.

If you are eligible to adjust to become a legal permanent resident you can apply for a green card but there isn't a cap on green cards in a specific year like there is a cap on other types of status. [/quote]

This is completely wrong.  Immigrant visas (green cards) are indeed capped by Congress for everybody but IRs of US citizens.  That’s why there is a waiting list to get a  green card in preference categories.  Some categories have short waits - like 2 1/2 years others are backlogged more than 20 years. [/quote]

Green cards are not 'immigrant visas.' Green cards are proof of permanent legal residence. It means you can stay here forever. There are waiting lists for certain kinds of visas and different amounts of times certain kinds of visas have to wait before they are eligible to apply for a green card. So you are completely wrong and apparently don't even know what a green card is. [/quote]

o.k., but from what I read above the U.S. has more visas available than there are takers.  Did I read that correctly?[/quote]

Because of per country limits this isn't exactly correct. Maybe we max out on visas (complicated word because it means a lot of different things) from China but not on visas eligible for Estonians. And i do not believe per country limits apply to green cards, they apply to family based and employment visas which has a trickle down effect on green cards but is not ACTUALLY per country limits ON green cards. [/quote]

Ok I just looked into it more. You can apply for a green card VIA a temporary employment visa (ie, come in on an H-1b and try to adjust status). There are 140,000 employment based green cards available in a given year. These green cards have per country limits. But this is just employment based green cards. There are other ways to apply for a green card so this is not indicative of the full green card picture. We gave out about a million green cards last year, for reference.

These employment based per country green cards are particularly hot as a topic because employers don't want to have their people have to move back to their home country and there are limits to how many temporary employement visas you can have or extend generally.[/quote]

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