India vs China Employment-Based Green Cards: FY2026 Closed, What FY2027 Could Bring, Category by Category
FY2026 is ending the way few expected back in spring: India EB-2 reached its annual limit in May and went unavailable, India EB-1 and EB-2 both retrogressed, and the pending-inventory reports show the 2013 cohort finally draining. FY2027 begins October 1 with a much larger family-to-employment spillover pool building behind it. This is the side-by-side India and China comparison, category by category, of what FY2026 delivered and what FY2027 could.
Sources: DOS Annual Numerical Limits FY2026, DOS Report of the Visa Office (Table V number use), the June 2026 visa bulletin, and the USCIS employment-based I-485 pending inventory as of April 3, 2026. FY2027 figures are projections from our live spillover model and carry low confidence this far out. Not legal advice.
The short version
- The swing factor for FY2027 is family-to-employment spillover. Unused family green cards fall into the employment pool: about 46,000 in FY2026, projected near 81,000 for FY2027 (and our strong-spillover case runs higher). That lifts the employment pool from roughly 186,000 toward 221,000.
- India gains the most because it is the most oversubscribed: it absorbs the largest share of redistributed numbers. India EB-2, which came in near 9,300 in the constrained FY2026, projects to a base case around 13,800 in FY2027, with real upside if spillover is strong.
- China is steadier. Its categories sit on denser 2020 to 2021 priority dates and a smaller backlog, so the extra supply moves China dates less dramatically than India.
- The April inventory confirms the drain: India EB-2's 2013 priority-date pile is shrinking, the 2014 wall is still the gate, and the first 2015 cases just appeared. China EB-2 demand stays concentrated in 2020 to 2021.
- New wildcard: a June 5, 2026 federal court ruling resumed USCIS green-card and work-permit processing for nationals of 39 previously-frozen countries. With about three months left in FY2026, that lets those countries use numbers our model assumed would spill to India and China, a downside risk to the FY2027 projection. The separate State Department visa pause for 75 countries and the entry travel ban both remain in place.
- These are supply projections, not promises. Spillover, the per-country absorption ceiling, the June court ruling, and the discretionary adjustment-of-status memo can all move the result.
Why FY2027 looks different: the spillover pool
Employment-based green cards start from a worldwide floor of 140,000 a year. On top of that, family-based green cards that go unused fall up into the employment pool. In FY2026 that fall-up was about 46,000, bringing the employment pool to roughly 186,000. For FY2027 our model projects the fall-up near 81,000, lifting the pool toward 221,000. If family-based usage stays as suppressed as recent consular disruptions suggest, the upside case runs higher still, toward 120,000 of fall-up. The methodology behind that estimate, and why we revised it from earlier numbers, is covered in our spillover revision post.
The catch: more pool does not help every country equally. Per-country limits cap each country at about 7 percent of each category, so the extra supply only reaches oversubscribed countries like India and China through redistribution of numbers other countries do not use. And that redistribution is itself capped by how many cases USCIS and the State Department can actually adjudicate for a single country in a year. India, as the most backlogged country, captures the largest absorbable share.
A new wildcard: the June 2026 court ruling
On June 5, 2026, a federal court vacated the USCIS freeze that had paused adjudication of green cards, work permits, asylum, and other benefits for nationals of 39 countries. USCIS must now resume processing those hundreds of thousands of suspended cases. Two related restrictions did not change: the State Department's separate pause on immigrant visa issuance for 75 countries, and the underlying entry travel ban, both remain in place.
This matters for the spillover math. Our projection assumed those 39 countries would keep consuming few green card numbers, leaving more to fall up to oversubscribed countries like India and China. With roughly three months left in the fiscal year and domestic processing resuming, some of those numbers will now be used by the unfrozen countries instead of spilling over. That is a downside risk: it pulls the realistic FY2027 outcome toward the lower-to-middle of our range and makes the optimistic upside less likely. The reason the spillover does not simply disappear is that the consular visa pause and the travel ban remain, so a large share of the suppression is still in force. The fuller effect would land in FY2028, since most of FY2026's numbers were already governed by the freeze before the ruling.
India: category by category
FY2026 was a constrained year for India. EB-2 reached its per-country limit in May 2026 and went unavailable for the rest of the year, after the final action date had retrogressed from July 2014 all the way back to September 2013. EB-1 retrogressed to December 2022. EB-3 actually advanced slightly, to December 2013. Here is what each category received in FY2026 against the FY2027 outlook.
| India | FY2026 issued (est.) | FY2027 base case | FY2027 strong spillover | Current FAD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | ~14,700 | ~22,600 | ~23,800 | Dec 2022 |
| EB-2 | ~9,300 (limit reached) | ~13,800 | ~17,900 | Sep 2013 |
| EB-3 | ~6,800 | ~8,800 | ~12,200 | Dec 2013 |
| Total | ~30,800 | ~45,200 | ~53,800 |
The base case assumes a normal spillover year with India absorbing its usual large share of redistributed numbers. The strong-spillover case is what happens if family-based stays heavily underused and India absorbs near its adjudication ceiling. There is also a floor: if spillover were to dry up entirely, each category falls back to the statutory per-country minimum of roughly 2,800 to 4,400 a year. That floor is not the expectation for FY2027 given the large pool building, but it is the worst case, and India EB-2 has actually landed near it in several recent years (under 4,000 in FY2017, FY2019, FY2020, FY2023 and FY2024). India EB-2 supply has historically been bimodal: either a floor year or a feast year, with little in between, which is why we publish a range rather than a single number. We unpack that pattern in our 15 years of India EB supply post.
The headline for India is EB-2's potential recovery. FY2026 delivered around 9,300 and hit a wall. FY2027's larger pool could lift that to roughly 13,800 in the base case, which is what would let the final action date climb back through 2014 and begin reaching 2015. EB-1 remains India's largest category by supply, and EB-3 stays the smallest.
China: category by category
China enters FY2027 in a calmer position. Its final action dates sit in 2021 (EB-2 September 2021, EB-3 August 2021) and 2023 (EB-1 April 2023), and its pending backlog is a fraction of India's. The extra spillover helps China too, but because China is less oversubscribed and its queue is shallower, the dates move less dramatically.
| China | FY2026 issued (est.) | FY2027 base case | FY2027 strong spillover | Current FAD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | ~5,900 | ~10,400 | ~10,700 | Apr 2023 |
| EB-2 | ~5,000 | ~6,400 | ~7,200 | Sep 2021 |
| EB-3 | ~4,800 | ~5,500 | ~6,600 | Aug 2021 |
| Total | ~15,700 | ~22,300 | ~24,500 |
China's steadier profile is also why its EB-2 and EB-3 dates have held for several bulletins rather than lurching. For a deeper look at China specifically, including the large EB-5 share and the I-140 picture, see our China EB data breakdown.
What the latest inventory says about demand
Supply is only half the equation. The USCIS pending I-485 inventory shows how the demand pile is draining, and the April 3, 2026 report is the first to capture the post-limit picture. The clearest signal is in India EB-2 by priority-date year.
| India EB-2 priority-date year | Pending (April 2026) | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 7,670 | Draining: down from 8,594 in March as the FAD clears it |
| 2014 | 17,421 | The wall: filed and waiting, but the FAD has not reached it yet |
| 2015 | 5 | New: the first 2015 cases ever to appear, as filing crossed into January 2015 |
The story this tells: FY2026 cleared into 2013, but the dense 2014 cohort, more than 17,000 cases, is the gate that the final action date must work through next. That is why even a recovered FY2027 supply moves the EB-2 India date through 2014 rather than leaping to 2015. China EB-2 demand, by contrast, is concentrated in 2020 and 2021 (about 3,560 cases sit at 2021 alone), a shallower and more recent pile that its steadier supply can keep pace with. You can see the full month-by-month breakdown in our April 2026 inventory analysis.
Where this could land in FY2027
If FY2027 supply recovers to the base case, the most likely path is India EB-2's final action date climbing back through 2014 over the year, with the dates-for-filing chart reaching into early-to-mid 2015. A strong spillover year could push the final action date toward the 2014 to 2015 boundary faster. The floor case, where spillover dries up, would leave India EB-2 barely moving. China EB-2 and EB-3 are likely to advance steadily through their 2021 cohorts rather than jump.
Several things can change all of this. First, the spillover number itself is a projection and depends on how underused family-based immigration turns out to be, which the June 5 court ruling (above) now puts at some downside risk. Second, the per-country absorption ceiling means India cannot simply soak up an unlimited share of a bigger pool. Third, the discretionary adjustment-of-status policy described in the May 2026 USCIS memo could shift how many cases are processed domestically versus abroad; our read of that memo is here.
You can run your own priority date against the live version of these supply scenarios on the Priority Date Estimator, which updates with each USCIS and State Department release.
This article is informational only and is not legal advice. FY2026 figures are estimates of actual issuance based on DOS data and the limit-reached announcement; FY2027 figures are projections from our live model and may change materially as new data is published. These figures reflect our June 2026 supply-model update and supersede our earlier per-category estimates. For guidance about your own case, consult a licensed immigration attorney.