Over a million people became legal permanent residents of the United States according to the United States Department of Homeland Security for the year 2012. Each year beginning the United States Office of the Immigration Statistics come up with the statistics of the previous year on the legal permanent residents summary annual report. This post focuses on how the year 2012 statistics looks like, specifically for India for the employment-based preferences.

2012 Leading Countries

As per Department of Homeland Security, the leading countries of birth of the new Legal Permanent Residents of the United States are:

• Mexico – 14 Percent

• China – 7.9 Percent

• India – 6.4 Percent

66 percent legal permanent residents under Family based preference

The statistics show that nearly 66 percent of the new legal permanent residents who were granted green cards, were based on the family relationship with a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident of the United States. This proves that family based green cards occupy larger space in the green cards category compared to employment based green cards.

Check the EB2 and EB2 priority Dates for the month April 2013 and previous months here.

Annual Limit – Employment Based Preferences

There is an annual limit based on employment-based preferences each year. The employment based preference limits for the year 2012 looked like this:

Check the H1BWiki post on Employment Based Green Cards and Wait Times.

2012 Employment Based Preferences Statistics

The legal permanent resident flow for the employment-based preferences as per Department of Homeland Security is around 143,998 for the year 2012. The statistics look almost steady since 3 years. Around 680,799 green cards were approved based on family-based preference out of 1,031,631 and it looks like there is a huge difference between the number of green cards approved for employment-based preference when compared with family-based preferences.

The above provided statistics are obtained from Department of Home land Security, provided by the Office of Immigration Statistics.