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What is the annual cap on U.S. lawful permanent resident green cards by year?
Executive summary
U.S. law does not set a single fixed annual “green card” total in one simple number for all pathways; instead Congress and the Immigration and Nationality Act create separate statutory ceilings and formulas that produce annual limits for family‑preference, employment‑based, diversity, and certain subcategories — with the commonly cited employment‑based baseline near 140,000 and family‑preference at about 226,000 for FY2025 [1] [2]. Immediate relatives (spouses, parents, minor children) are exempt from numerical caps, and employment‑based totals are further sliced by category percentages and a 7% per‑country ceiling that has driven long backlogs [3] [1].
1. How the annual totals are set: statutory ceilings and formulas
Congress sets ceilings in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which are then allocated each fiscal year by the State Department and USCIS using statutory formulas — producing separate caps for family‑preference categories, employment‑based categories, the diversity visa (DV) program, and rules that exclude immediate relatives from numerical limits [2] [3]. For example, the fiscal‑year 2025 family‑sponsored preference total was calculated at 226,000, reflecting the INA’s formula and annual adjustments [2].
2. Employment‑based “about 140,000” explains the oft‑quoted baseline
Advocacy groups and analysts repeatedly refer to “approximately 140,000” employment‑based green cards per year — this figure represents the statutory employment‑based baseline that is then allocated across EB‑1 through EB‑5 and their subcategories, and it is widely used to explain capacity and backlog dynamics [1] [4]. Note: that baseline is not the whole story because dependents of employment‑based principal beneficiaries also count against the employment cap, reducing the number of principal beneficiaries who receive visas [4].
3. Category shares and sub‑caps matter in practice
Employment categories are carved into percentage shares (for instance, some reporting notes EB‑2 historically receives 28.6% of the worldwide employment‑based limit), and EB‑5 and other subgroups have additional formulaic allocations — so an “annual cap on green cards” varies by category and can be exhausted at different times within a fiscal year [5] [6]. State Department announcements in 2025 repeatedly reported that specific EB categories (EB‑1, EB‑2, EB‑3, EB‑5 unreserved) had reached their FY‑2025 limits, triggering temporary unavailability until the October 1 fiscal reset [7] [8] [6].
4. Per‑country ceilings create the most visible bottlenecks
The INA imposes a per‑country limit so no single country may receive more than 7% of available green cards in a given category/year; organisations and analysts point to that 7% per‑country rule as the principal cause of decades‑long waits for nationals of high‑demand countries such as India and China [1] [9]. Legislative proposals like the Dignity Act of 2025 were designed to change these percentages (proposing, for example, to raise per‑country caps) because advocates argue the 7% rule creates inequitable queues [10].
5. Diversity visas and other reductions shift headline numbers
The Diversity Visa program nominally allocates up to 55,000 visas annually, but statutory carve‑outs (such as NACARA and other adjustments) reduce the number available in practice — for DV‑2025, official materials projected roughly 52,000 due to such deductions [2]. These programmatic adjustments illustrate why “total green cards per year” reported in headlines can vary by source and fiscal adjustments.
6. Recent practical totals and year‑to‑year variation
Public reporting and government FAQs show annual employment‑based totals have fluctuated: analysts cite the employment‑based annual limit for FY‑2024 as 160,791 because unused family‑sponsored numbers were made available that year; similar year‑to‑year reallocations can raise or lower employment‑based availability [11]. This shows that the apparent annual cap is a moving target shaped by unused numbers, statutory offsets, and one‑time reallocations [11] [2].
7. What this means for applicants and policy debates
For applicants: immediate relatives aren’t capped and don’t queue; family‑preference and employment‑based applicants face numerically limited slots and per‑country waits [3] [4]. For policymakers and advocates: common proposals aim to raise employment totals, adjust per‑country percentages, or exclude dependents from employment‑based counts (examples include an 18,000‑visa increase in a 2024 Senate bill and the Dignity Act’s proposed reforms) — reflecting competing views about fairness, labor market needs, and backlog relief [12] [10].
Limitations and gaps: available sources establish the statutory structure, common baseline figures (about 140,000 EB), per‑country rules (7%), and recent FY‑2024/2025 reallocations and pauses, but they do not provide a single, fixed annual global “green card” number by year for every pathway in a simple list — the totals change by fiscal year because of formulas, reallocation of unused numbers, and legislative carryovers [1] [11] [2].