For Indians chasing a green card, two doors just shut until October

The investor route closed too. The State Department announced on 10 June that every EB-5 unreserved visa available to Indian applicants had been issued as of 5 June. That category — the one that asks for an $800,000-to-$1.05 million investment and ten American jobs — is now shut as well.

What "unavailable" actually means

It is the bluntest setting on the bulletin. For Indians in these categories, no immigrant visas will be issued and no green cards approved until the new fiscal year starts on 1 October, and even then only if fresh numbers and demand allow. An engineer whose file is otherwise ready to be signed just waits.

The freeze lands on the largest group

Indians take 71 percent of approved H-1B petitions, and most of them are trying to turn that temporary visa into permanent residence through exactly these categories. The EB-3 backlog for Indians already runs past twelve years. So the categories carrying the bulk of the country's skilled workers are the ones that went dark.

Not every line moved backward. EB-1, the top tier for standout researchers and executives, slipped two months to October 2022, and the department warned it may retrogress further or close too. On the family side, some queues advanced — the wait for unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens moved forward five months. The reserved EB-5 lanes for rural and high-unemployment projects stayed current. But those are the edges, not the center.

The wall is the law

This is the per-country cap doing what it was built to do. U.S. law lets no single country claim more than 7 percent of the green cards in a category each year, no matter its population or how many people apply. For the country that sends the most skilled applicants, that math produces a line that can outlast a working life. The July bulletin did not build the wall. It announced that, this year, Indians hit it early — in June, with the fiscal year still three-plus months from its reset.

The timing is its own comment. The freeze arrives the same month a Boston court struck down the $100,000 H-1B fee, a rare win for Indian workers. Clearing that barrier does little when the next one is the green-card queue itself. The fee was the headline. The wait is the story.