EB-3 Visa Bulletin 2026 Alert: Indians Face 12+ Year Wait as EW Category Goes Unavailable

Indian nationals pursuing employment-based green cards through the EB-3 and EW (Unskilled/Other Workers) categories are confronting severe backlogs after both categories were marked as exhausted for the 2025 fiscal year. This means no new visa numbers are available for India-born applicants in these categories until the next fiscal year begins, effectively halting forward movement for thousands of pending cases. The per-country annual cap system — which limits any single country to no more than 7% of total employment-based visas — is the root cause of this disparity. India, with its massive pool of applicants in the employment-based pipeline, routinely exhausts its country allocation far ahead of other nations. As a result, Indian EB-3 applicants face priority date cutoffs stretching back more than a decade, while applicants from countries like Vietnam or Mexico may wait only 2–3 years for the same category. The contrast is stark when compared to other nationalities. Vietnamese EB-3 applicants currently face waits of approximately 2 years, while Indian applicants in the same EB-3 skilled worker category face waits exceeding 12 years. For the EW (unskilled worker) subcategory, India's dates are currently listed as 'Unavailable' in the Visa Bulletin, meaning forward movement has completely stalled. For Indian nationals currently in the EB-3 pipeline, this development underscores the importance of maintaining valid nonimmigrant status (such as H-1B) while waiting, and consulting with an immigration attorney about potential alternative pathways, including EB-1 or EB-2 National Interest Waiver options that may have shorter queues. This situation highlights ongoing calls from immigration advocates for legislative reform to either eliminate or significantly raise the per-country caps in the employment-based immigration system — a change that has repeatedly stalled in Congress despite bipartisan discussions.