A new data-driven study from The Mendoza Law Firm examining the U.S. family immigration system has found that roughly four million people with already-approved family-based petitions remain stuck on overseas waiting lists, some for more than two decades, held back by visa quotas that have changed little in over 35 years.
The study, titled “Waiting To Reunite: The Length of Family Petitions,” found that the United States issued about 1.36 million green cards in fiscal year 2024, the highest total in more than a decade, with more than half going to family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders. Mexico accounted for the largest share of recipients at roughly 15%, followed by Cuba at around 13%, and China, India, and the Dominican Republic each at roughly 5%.
“People think of immigration as a legal process. What they do not see is what happens to a family during a 20-year wait,” a Mendoza Law spokesperson said. “Children grow up without a parent. Siblings become strangers. Petitioners die before their cases are resolved. By the time some of these families finally reunite, the relationship the petition was filed to protect no longer looks the same.”
Approval is only the beginning
The study found that even after a petition is approved, families often face a far longer wait than most people realize. USCIS began 2025 with more than 11 million cases still awaiting processing, and even routine family-based petitions can take over a year to move through initial processing steps before an applicant ever reaches the visa number queue.
Once in that queue, the wait can stretch on for decades. The study’s breakdown of the family preference system, which covers adult children of citizens, spouses and adult children of green card holders, married children of citizens, and siblings of citizens, found that these categories are collectively capped at approximately 226,000 visas annually, a figure far below actual demand.
A queue tracked one month at a time
Families in the queue track their place in line through the State Department’s monthly Visa Bulletin, which the study describes as a routine many families check obsessively, hoping to see even incremental movement. Progress is often measured in weeks or months rather than years, meaning a backlog stretching back decades may barely shift from one bulletin to the next.
The study broke down wait times by category, finding that the F1 category, covering unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens, involves waits approaching a decade for many applicants and longer for oversubscribed countries. F3, covering married children of citizens, exceeds 14 years worldwide and can surpass 25 years for some countries. F4, covering siblings of citizens, is the most backlogged category overall, with more than two million people currently in line.
A system with two very different tracks
The study emphasizes that the backlog does not apply evenly to all family members. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, including spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents, face no annual numerical limits and can proceed through the process once their petition is approved. Everyone else enters the capped family preference system, where demand consistently exceeds the annual visa allocation.
Concentrated in specific American communities
The study found the impact of the backlog is heavily concentrated in a handful of states and metro areas. California is home to close to 11 million immigrants and Texas around 5.8 million, with Florida, New York, and New Jersey adding millions more. Together, these states account for more than half of the country’s foreign-born population. At the metro level, the New York area alone has nearly six million immigrants, and Greater Los Angeles has more than four million, with Miami, Houston, and Chicago close behind.
“Legislative proposals exist, such as the Reuniting Families Act and the Dignity Act, bipartisan bills introduced across multiple Congresses,” the Mendoza Law spokesperson added. “The data to justify action has existed for decades. What has been missing is the political will to treat family separation as the crisis it actually is.”
