How many legal permanent residents (green cards) were issued during Biden’s term?
Executive summary
Available sources in the provided set do not report a single, aggregated number for how many lawful permanent resident (green) cards were issued during President Biden’s term; they focus on visa bulletins, policy changes, and selective program actions such as refugee re‑reviews (not total counts) (not found in current reporting). The documents here include Visa Bulletins and reporting on policy reviews and pauses (e.g., refugee re‑review announced November 21, 2025) but contain no consolidated issuance totals for 2021–2024 or 2021–2025 [1] [2] [3].
1. What the available documents actually cover — calendars and policy actions, not totals
The materials you supplied are largely Visa Bulletins and commentary about monthly movement in priority dates and agency policy shifts; for example, the State Department Visa Bulletin pages for November and December 2025 explain priority‑date charts and filing vs. final‑action rules, but they do not provide a retrospective tally of green cards issued over a multi‑year presidential term [1] [2]. Separately, legal blogs and news pieces in the set discuss programmatic changes — such as USCIS pausing review of certain refugee adjustment‑of‑status cases — rather than summarizing total LPR issuances [3].
2. Policy events that can change issuance patterns — cited but not quantified here
Several entries document administrative moves that could affect green‑card flows: the federal Visa Bulletins change monthly availability and priority dates (which influences when individual approvals can occur) [1] [2], and USCIS issued a directive on November 21, 2025 to re‑review refugees admitted during 2021–2025 and pause related I‑485 cases [3]. Those sources establish context for shifting throughput but do not convert into a total count of green cards issued under the Biden administration [3] [1].
3. What these sources say about specific categories and monthly movement — useful for trend analysis, not totals
The December 2025 Visa Bulletin and related analyses document monthly advances or stagnation in family‑ and employment‑based priority dates (examples: Dates for Filing used for December 2025; particular category movement noted in December bulletin summaries), which are indicators of demand and potential approvals in given months [4] [5] [6]. Those bulletins and practice notes are valuable if you want to estimate month‑by‑month capacity, but none here compiles a presidential‑term aggregate of green cards issued [4] [6].
4. Where totals would normally come from — not present among provided documents
A comprehensive count of green cards issued during a president’s term is typically compiled from DHS or State Department statistical yearbooks and annual immigration reports. The set you provided does not include DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, State Department visa issuance summaries, or aggregated press releases with multi‑year totals. Therefore, an authoritative number is not available in these sources; any claim about the total number issued during Biden’s term would require additional reporting beyond this dataset (not found in current reporting).
5. Conflicting narratives in the supplied coverage — administrative review vs. claims of mass admissions
Some items in your set present contrasting framings: advocacy and legal sites explain procedural updates and temporary pauses (for example, USCIS refugee re‑review) in neutral/legal detail [3], while other pieces quote political statements framing prior admissions as excessive or dangerous and describe incoming administration reviews and bans [7] [8]. Both kinds of coverage appear in the documents you supplied; neither type provides a term‑wide issuance total, but both can shape how readers interpret whether issuance was “high” or “low” [3] [7] [8].
6. Limitations and next steps to get a definitive answer
Because none of the supplied sources present a presidential‑term total for lawful permanent resident issuances, I cannot cite a figure from them; that specific factual assertion is not present in the provided reporting (not found in current reporting). To produce a reliable total you should consult DHS’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics or State Department immigrant visa issuance tables for FY2021–FY2024 (and FY2025 if needed), or official USCIS annual reports; those sources usually list annual LPR‑admission or immigrant‑visa issuance counts by fiscal year. The current document set does not include those statistical reports (not found in current reporting).
If you want, I can (A) list precisely which DHS/State tables to fetch, or (B) draft search terms and a short plan to obtain and sum the fiscal‑year counts to produce the total for Biden’s term.