We frequently discuss the approval rate statistics for EB2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) or for the general EB-2 category. The EB2 category is the overarching class to which NIW green cards belong to. In today’s article we will see the historic approval rates for the general category, broken down by country.
Official Data from USCIS
USCIS publishes this data regularly and it breaks it down to five countries: India, China, Philippines, Brazil, and Nigeria. So even though this is not data specific for EB2 NIW, it can tell us something about the performance of each country when it comes to the general EB-2 category. The data cover the last ten years, but keep in mind that for 2024 only data until quarter 3 is available.
The approval rates for EB-2 by country
In the figure below, we have plotted the official USCIS data in an interactive chart. You can see how all countries except Brazil have maintained at least 80% approval rates in EB-2 green cards in the past ten years. Brazil is the outlier and performed worse than everyone else, with a continuous decline in approval rates since 2016. The lowest approval rate achieved by this country was 57.4% in 2023. The available data for 2024 shows a slight recovery, but we should wait for data for the whole year (only Q1-Q3 is available) until we come to conclusions.
The total number of cases by country
It is very important to note that the number of EB-2 applications varies wildly by country of birth, as can be seen in the graph below. India is, by far, the country that contributes more cases to the category. This is true for all employment-based green card categories.
In EB-2, India has exceeded 25,000 cases every year for the last decade, reaching 50,000 cases in 2016. This is far from the second contributor, China, that has never reached 13,000 cases in a given year. Brazil has been consistently number 3 by number of cases presented since 2018.
The number of cases is important because it means the sample size is not the same for all countries. So smaller variability in approvals for countries with less cases, such as Philippines, could cause bigger fluctuation in the approval rate figure.
What this data means
Remember this data does not reflect your individual chance to get an EB-2 approval. Even less so, the chance for an EB-2 NIW approval. The probability of your success depends on the quality of your petition, of your proposed endeavor, your credentials, and even external factors such as the official in charge of your case.