U.S. Immigration Quotas by Country: Seven Percent Cap and Backlogs

U.S. immigration quotas by country cap each nation’s natives at seven percent of the green cards issued in the family-sponsored and employment-based categories each year. That single rule, layered on top of fixed annual limits for each preference category, is why applicants born in India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines face waits measured in decades while applicants from most other countries move through with little or no delay. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens sit outside the quota system entirely, so a large share of green card applicants never encounter these backlogs at all.

What the Seven Percent Cap Actually Means

Under 8 U.S.C. § 1152, no single country’s natives can receive more than seven percent of the combined family-sponsored and employment-based immigrant visas issued in a fiscal year.¹ Dependent territories and colonies face a tighter two percent limit.

The math works out to roughly 25,620 visas per independent country and about 7,320 per dependent area, based on the combined worldwide levels of approximately 226,000 family-preference and 140,000 employment-based visas.²

When applicants from a given country exceed that country’s share, the government stops issuing visas to that country’s nationals for the year and the overflow joins a queue. For most countries, demand never reaches the cap and the rule is invisible. For a handful of high-demand countries, the same rule has created the backlogs described below.

Who Is Exempt from the Quotas

Before reading further into backlog numbers, check whether your case is even subject to them. Spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents of U.S. citizens who are at least 21 years old are classified as “immediate relatives.” They face no numerical limit and no per-country cap.³

This group accounts for more than 40 percent of new lawful permanent residents each year.⁴ If you are a U.S. citizen petitioning for a spouse, minor child, or parent, the per-country quotas do not apply to your case. Processing times at USCIS and the State Department still apply, but there is no backlog line to wait in.

Everything below concerns the preference categories: adult children, siblings, spouses and children of permanent residents, and employment-based applicants.

Family Preference Categories and Their Limits

Congress sets a baseline of 226,000 family-sponsored preference visas per year, divided across four categories.³⁵

F1, unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens: up to 23,400 visas.
F2, spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents: up to 114,200 visas, with at least 77 percent reserved for spouses and minor children.
F3, married adult children of U.S. citizens: up to 23,400 visas.
F4, siblings of adult U.S. citizens: up to 65,000 visas.

The seven percent per-country cap applies across all four combined. That is why the F4 sibling category for the Philippines is currently processing petitions filed in July 2007, roughly a nineteen-year wait.⁶ For countries with lower demand, the same category may be current with no wait.

Employment Preference Categories and Their Limits

The employment-based side receives 140,000 visas per year, divided into five tiers.⁷

EB-1, priority workers (extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers, multinational executives): 28.6 percent, roughly 40,040 visas.
EB-2, advanced-degree professionals or individuals of exceptional ability: 28.6 percent.
EB-3, skilled workers and professionals: 28.6 percent.
EB-4, special immigrants including certain religious workers and translators: 7.1 percent, roughly 9,940 visas.
EB-5, immigrant investors: 7.1 percent.

The seven percent per-country cap slices across the whole employment pool, so a single country receives about 9,800 employment-based visas per year spread across all five tiers.

Why India and China Wait the Longest

For India, demand for EB-2 and EB-3 vastly exceeds that annual share. The June 2026 Visa Bulletin shows India’s EB-2 final action date stuck at September 2013, meaning applicants whose petitions were filed after that date are still waiting more than twelve years later.⁶ India’s EB-3 date sits at December 2013.

The State Department has warned that further retrogression in India’s EB-1 and EB-2 dates may be necessary before the end of fiscal year 2026, and that those categories could become entirely unavailable if demand continues to outpace the annual limit.⁶

The Diversity Visa Program Has Its Own Country Rules

The Diversity Visa program allocates up to 55,000 green cards each year to nationals of countries with historically low immigration to the United States.⁸ About 5,000 are redirected annually to offset adjustments under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, leaving roughly 50,000 in practice.⁹

The DV program carries its own seven percent per-country cap, limiting any single nation to about 3,850 diversity visas.⁵ Any country that sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States over the preceding five years is excluded from the program entirely.⁸

For DV-2026, the excluded countries are Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong), Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela, and Vietnam.¹⁰

Finding Your Place in Line: The Visa Bulletin

If you are in a preference category, the Department of State’s monthly Visa Bulletin tells you whether a visa number is available for your category, country, and filing date.¹¹ Your “priority date” is the date your underlying petition (an I-130 for family, an I-140 for employment) was filed with USCIS. If that date is earlier than the published cutoff for your category and country, a visa number is available and you can move to the final step.

The bulletin has two charts. The Final Action Dates chart shows when a visa can actually be issued. The Dates for Filing chart is more generous and shows when you can submit an adjustment-of-status application even though a visa has not been formally allocated yet.¹² USCIS decides monthly which chart adjustment-of-status filers may use.

When demand from a country or category surges past supply for a given month, cutoff dates move backward. This is called retrogression, and it can push applicants who expected to file soon further into the future.

Cross-Chargeability: A Spouse’s Birthplace Can Cut the Wait

Your place in the per-country queue is determined by where you were born, not by your citizenship or current nationality. An Indian citizen born in Canada would be charged to Canada’s quota.

More practically, 8 U.S.C. § 1152(b) allows a spouse who is accompanying or following to join the principal applicant to be charged to the other spouse’s country of birth, as long as immigration to that country has not already reached its annual limit.¹ Children can also be charged to either parent’s country to avoid separation.

Both spouses must apply together for cross-chargeability to work. For a couple where one partner was born in India and the other in a country with no backlog, this rule can turn a decades-long wait into months.

Watch for Children Aging Out

Long backlogs create a specific risk: a child included as a derivative on a parent’s petition may turn 21 before a visa number becomes available. Immigration law defines a “child” as under 21 and unmarried, so an aged-out child would otherwise lose derivative status and need a separate petition in a slower category.

The Child Status Protection Act freezes a child’s age using a formula. Take the child’s age on the date a visa became available (or the petition approval date, whichever came later), and subtract the number of days the petition was pending before approval. If the result is under 21, and the child is unmarried, the child still qualifies.¹³

There is a hard deadline: the child must take steps to acquire permanent resident status within one year of a visa becoming available, or the age protection can be lost.¹⁴ For families waiting fifteen or twenty years, tracking that one-year window is essential.

Why the Waits Are So Long

The current quota structure was set in 1990, when Congress fixed the 140,000 employment-based and 226,000 family-preference floors. Those numbers have not been adjusted for population growth or for the rise in demand from countries whose economies and educational systems have expanded substantially in the decades since. The seven percent per-country cap treats every country identically regardless of population size.

The result is a mismatch of supply and demand concentrated in a small number of high-demand countries. Unused family-sponsored visas from one year roll into the following year’s employment-based pool, which occasionally provides a temporary boost.³ Unused employment-based numbers do not flow back to the family side in any meaningful way. For applicants from India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines, the backlog continues to grow faster than the system clears it.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1152 – Numerical Limitations on Individual Foreign States
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Visa Availability and Priority Dates
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1151 – Worldwide Level of Immigration
4
DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics. Immigrant Classes of Admission
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1153 – Allocation of Immigrant Visas
6
U.S. Department of State. Visa Bulletin for June 2026
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1153 – Allocation of Immigrant Visas
8
U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. 9 FAM 502.6 – Diversity Immigrant Visas
9
U.S. Department of State. Appendix E – Diversity Visa Statistics
10
U.S. Department of State. DV-2026 Plain Language Instructions and FAQs
11
U.S. Department of State. The Visa Bulletin
12
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Child Status Protection Act
14
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Updates Policy Guidance for the Sought to Acquire Requirement Under the Child Status Protection Act