Green Card Wait Calculator
A priority date calculator that estimates your employment-based green-card wait from 16 years of official Visa Bulletin data — with a back-tested, calibrated range.
This free priority date calculator estimates how long an employment-based green-card applicant (EB-1, EB-2/NIW, or EB-3) may wait, based on your category, country of birth, and priority date. It reads the full U.S. State Department Visa Bulletin record — every Final Action Date since 2010 — and returns a back-tested range.
I was born in and filed with a priority date of .
You would wait about50 years.
Plausible range 28–89 years. Why such a wide range?
How we calculate this
Two methods. They agree the wait is long — and disagree on how long. That disagreement is the point.
Method 1 · Standing in line
We count the people ahead of you — approved petitions awaiting a visa for your category and country, from USCIS data, including spouses and children — and divide by how many green cards this line actually receives each year, from the State Department's annual reports. Supply swings sharply year to year — rare spillover years issue several times a normal year — which is why the honest answer is a range, not a date.
Where you stand in line
The line above, reduced to arithmetic — this is the estimate at the top of the page.
Method 2 · The cutoff's pace
Project how fast the Visa Bulletin cutoff has been moving and extend the trend. For this case, pace alone suggests roughly 14 years — but the cutoff has only been clearing the thin, already-drained front of the line. It can't see how many people stand behind it, and a January 2020 date sits in the densest stretch of the queue. The pace is already slowing — about 22% over the last three years — as it reaches that crowd.
This method assumes the recent pace of movement continues; it does not forecast future demand or policy changes.
Why we lead with the line count
A pace projection assumes the future moves like the past. Over a multi-decade horizon, a small wrong assumption compounds into decades of error — filings weren't steady across the 2010s, so the speed the cutoff showed while crossing sparse years overstates its speed through the crowd ahead of you. Counting the line doesn't depend on that assumption: the people are already standing there, and the annual supply is set by law. In back-testing against sixteen years of published bulletins, the line-based method beat the pace-only projection on both accuracy and the honesty of its ranges.
Other categories can deliver much faster results.
A different path — say EB-1A or a National Interest Waiver — can change the math entirely, sometimes by decades. Whether one fits you is worth a real conversation, not a guess.
Talk through faster optionsSee EB-1A vs NIW·Got an RFE? Decode what USCIS's language means
Educational estimate from the U.S. State Dept Visa Bulletin (travel.state.gov), as of 2026-05-29. Not legal advice — the Visa Bulletin is unpredictable and can retrogress.
How this works (and what it can't do)
We keep the full official Visa Bulletin record (every month since 2010) and project each category-and-country cutoff forward using a robust trend (Theil–Sen) for the center line and a back-tested band for the range.
For heavily backlogged categories (India/China EB-2/EB-3) we lead with a place-in-lineestimate instead: how many approved petitions are ahead of you (USCIS data) ÷ how many green cards your category and country actually receive each year (State Dept data). For a long backlog that’s far more honest than projecting the cutoff’s recent speed — which only reflects the thin front of the line and badly understates a recent priority date.
Why you can trust it: we tested 12 forecasting methods across 16 years of out-of-sample history. This one had the best accuracy and a properly calibrated 80% range — meaning when we say "80% range," the real outcome has historically landed inside it about that often. It beat the naive approach with statistical significance.
What it can't do: the Visa Bulletin is driven by demand and policy and can move backward (retrogress). Even the best method is off by a couple of years at long horizons — so we show a widening range, never a precise date. Use it to plan, not to rely on.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Immigration counsel to Fortune 500 employers at a national firm · Adjudicated 12,000+ visas at the U.S. Consulate, Mexico · Working in U.S. immigration since 2008
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