According to a recent report by National Law Review, the number of permanent residence permits available for employment in the federal government’s fiscal year 2022, which ends in September, is about 280,000, double the 140,000 per year prescribed by regulations.
According to the media and immigration lawyers, the Federal State Department and the U.S. Immigration Services Agency (USCIS) set the maximum quota for permanent residency for employment in fiscal 2022 at an all-time high of more than 280,000. This is because about 140,000 unused family immigration quotas in fiscal 2021 were carried over, National Raw Review explained.
According to the federal immigration law, the annual permanent residency quota is set at 140,000 for employment immigrants and 226,000 for family immigrants. If there is any unused portion in the family immigration quota, it will be possible to increase the employment immigration permanent residence quota by the number of unused portions in the next fiscal year.
However, due to the delay in processing of permanent residency by the Federal Immigration Service due to the COVID-19 pandemic in fiscal 2021, about 140,000 family immigration permanent residency quotas were not filled.
Due to the corona crisis, this phenomenon also appeared in the last fiscal year, and as of fiscal 2021, the total number of employment migrants and permanent residency quotas amounted to 262,288, including the unused quota for family immigration in the previous fiscal year. However, due to the backlog of immigration procedures, 66,781 employment immigration quotas were not used during the 2021 fiscal year quota, immigration law lawyers said.
However, it is explained that there is no provision in the immigration law that, unlike the family immigration permanent residence quota, the unused portion of the employment immigration quota can be carried over to the next year.
As the extra quota in the work-immigrant sector has increased, the State Department and USCIS are said to be able to expedite the processing of employment-immigrant-permanent residency applications by the end of the fiscal year by the end of September so that as many cases as possible can be processed.
In this regard, the State Department and the USCIS were counted as having exhausted their quota for a total of 176,281 employment immigrants as of June 30, when the third quarter of fiscal 2022 ended. As a result, there are still more than 100,000 quotas for employment immigration permanent residency that can be used until the end of September, when fiscal year 2022 ends.