What categories (family, employment, refugee, diversity) make up annual immigrant visa issuances and how many visas does each category typically provide?
Executive summary
The United States’ permanent immigrant visa system is composed chiefly of family‑sponsored, employment‑based, refugee/asylee, and diversity‑lottery categories, each governed by distinct statutory limits or program rules and yielding different annual issuance totals; family‑sponsored flows are the largest controlled bucket, employment is statutorily capped at roughly 140,000 a year, the diversity lottery provides up to 55,000 visas, and refugee/asylee admissions are handled through a separate presidential ceiling and admissions process [1] [2] [3]. Exact annual issuances fluctuate due to rollovers, unused numbers, timing of adjustments and arrivals, and operational constraints reported in the Department of State and DHS annual visa reports [2] [1] [4].
1. Family‑sponsored: the broad umbrella and where most green cards originate
Family‑sponsored immigration is split between an uncapped Immediate Relative class for spouses, parents and minor children of U.S. citizens and a numerically limited set of family‑preference categories that together are administered under an annual family preference allocation (the family preference pool is governed by statutory formulas and recent fiscal‑year calculations put the family preference allocation around 226,000 for FY2025 after statutory adjustments) and long backlogs often develop because demand exceeds supply in certain preference classes and countries [3] [5]. Immediate Relatives are explicitly not counted against annual preference limits and therefore can push the total number of people becoming lawful permanent residents higher in any given year, a dynamic the State Department and USCIS track in their annual reports [3] [6].
2. Employment‑based: a fixed quota with subcategories and rollover mechanics
Employment‑based immigrant visas are subject to a statutory worldwide limit—generally described as about 140,000 slots per fiscal year—which are then divided among EB‑1 through EB‑5 preference subclasses and subject to per‑country caps; unused visas from higher‑priority employment subclasses can “roll down” to fill other employment categories or to family categories in complex allocation rules administered monthly by the Visa Office [2] [5]. Operationally, the State Department has announced fiscal years in which EB categories reached their numerical limits (for example, FY2024 saw EB‑1, EB‑2, EB‑3, EW, EB‑4 and EB‑5 unreserved categories reach capacity), illustrating how demand routinely exhausts the statutory employment pool [7].
3. Refugee and asylee admissions: a separate ceiling and an administratively set flow
Refugee and asylee admissions are not shoehorned into the family or employment preference numbers; refugees are admitted under a presidentially determined annual refugee ceiling and processed through different channels than consular immigrant visas, while asylees adjust status under separate procedures once admitted or granted protection in the United States—both pathways are treated as distinct forms of lawful permanent residency flows in federal reporting rather than being included in the family/employment numeric ceilings [1] [6]. The State Department and DHS publish separate statistics and policy statements on refugee ceilings and admissions in their annual reports, and those totals can vary widely year to year depending on administration policy and global crises [6] [4].
4. Diversity Visa lottery: a fixed 55,000 allocation with statutory rules
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (the “green card lottery”) is statutorily capped at up to 55,000 visas per year and is reserved for entrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States; that number is relatively stable and is explicitly allocated outside the family and employment preference ceilings, though administration and processing capacity affect how many lottery winners actually receive visas each fiscal year [3] [4]. The Visa Office’s annual Report and monthly issuance datasets provide the recorded totals for diversity issuances by fiscal year and post, and they reflect the gap that sometimes exists between authorized slots and visas actually issued [8] [9].
5. What the headline numbers hide: adjustments, rollovers and reporting caveats
Official annual tallies are shaped by statutory caps, per‑country limits, rollovers of unused numbers, the timing between grant of LPR status and physical arrival, and changes in Department of State reporting methodology introduced in recent years—factors that mean “about X visas” is an accurate shorthand only when footnoted with the Visa Office’s final year‑end reports and DHS adjustment statistics [2] [1] [9]. For readers seeking the precise distribution in a specific fiscal year, the State Department’s Report of the Visa Office and USCIS immigration and citizenship data provide the comprehensive breakout by category, post, and country of chargeability that underpins these program‑level summaries [8] [10].