If you followed the EB-1 green card in 2021, you watched one of the strangest years in modern immigration history. The pandemic shut down consulates in 2020, which meant family-based visa numbers went unused, which meant those numbers spilled over into the employment-based categories for fiscal year 2021. The result: an employment-based annual limit of roughly 262,000 green cards, far above the normal level of about 140,000. For extraordinary-ability applicants, star researchers, and multinational executives, the door was suddenly wide open. What happened next is a lesson in how government capacity, not law, often decides who gets a green card.
A rare window: EB-1 current for everyone
For most of 2021, the State Department visa bulletin showed EB-1 as current for every country, including India and China, the two countries that normally face the longest waits. That meant an Indian-born researcher approved for EB-1 could file the final green card application immediately instead of waiting years.
Applicants who moved decisively in 2021 were rewarded. Those who waited for a better moment learned a hard truth: windows like this close.
The scandal of the wasted numbers
Here is the part that should bother anyone who believes in a rules-based system. Congress made an unusually large number of employment-based green cards available in fiscal year 2021. The agencies simply failed to use them all. Roughly 66,000 employment-based numbers expired unused when the fiscal year closed at the end of September 2021.
- USCIS was buried in pandemic-era backlogs and could not adjudicate applications fast enough.
- Consulates abroad were still operating at reduced capacity under COVID protocols.
- Each wasted number was a legal immigrant, someone who followed every rule, left waiting for no good reason.
That is not compassion and it is not enforcement. It is bureaucratic failure, and legal applicants paid the price.
Rules and processing in 2021
The core EB-1 requirements did not change in 2021. EB-1A still demanded evidence of extraordinary ability, EB-1B covered outstanding professors and researchers, and EB-1C served multinational managers and executives. Premium processing, the paid 15-day service, remained available for EB-1A and EB-1B petitions but not for EB-1C, which left many transferring executives stuck in long queues.
The new administration that took office in January 2021 rolled back several restrictive policies from the prior years, and requests for evidence became somewhat less aggressive than at their 2018 to 2020 peak. Still, processing times stayed long, and applicants with clean, well-documented petitions had a clear edge.
The politics behind the numbers
2021 exposed a real divide. Washington spent enormous energy debating parole programs and border policy while the machinery serving legal, high-skilled immigrants sputtered. A merit-based system only works if the government actually delivers the green cards the law provides. Advocates pushed Congress to recapture the wasted numbers; Congress did not act.
What this means for you
The 2021 experience carries durable lessons for anyone eyeing EB-1 today.
- When your priority date is current, file immediately. Favorable visa bulletin conditions can vanish within months.
- Build your evidence before you need it: publications, judging, awards, press, and leadership roles take time to accumulate.
- Use premium processing where available so an agency backlog does not eat your window.
- Do not assume surplus years will repeat. The spillover of 2021 and 2022 was a pandemic artifact, not a new normal.
EB-1 remains the fastest employment-based green card for those who qualify, and 2021 proved that preparation plus speed beats waiting for perfect conditions.
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