The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is racing against time to issue 280,000 green cards before the fiscal year ends on September 30.

While closures and limited operations at US embassies and consular offices through the pandemic led to high numbers of available employment-based green cards, as of mid-June 2022, USCIS and the US Department of State (DOS) have used significantly more visas than at the same point in FY 2021.

USCIS alone using more than twice as many visas on a weekly basis than it was at this point in FY 2021.

Through May 31, 2022, the two agencies have combined to use 149,733 employment-based immigrant visas.“We remain committed to taking every viable policy and procedural action to maximize our use of all available visas by the end of the fiscal year,” the USCIS said in a statement.

Data from the US visa office shows that the US government had 66,781 unused employment-based green cards in the 2021 fiscal year, even as 1.4 million immigrants are queued up for it. A majority of these are Indians, who have been stuck in the green card backlog for years.

We remain committed to taking every viable policy and procedural action to maximize our use of all available visas by the end of the fiscal year,” the USCIS said in a statement.

Data from the US visa office shows that the US government had 66,781 unused employment-based green cards in the 2021 fiscal year, even as 1.4 million immigrants are queued up for it. A majority of these are Indians, who have been stuck in the green card backlog for years.

USCIS eventually issued 180,000 green cards last year—more than a typical year but still falling short of the total available.The processing time for employer sponsored green cards crossed the three-year wait time in 2022.