The green mile

Aside from the lucky few Irish people who obtain green cards each year through the DV visa lottery, the only ways to petition for a permanent status in the U.S. is through a spouse or family member who is a U.S. citizen.
At present, processing of I-485 files, the final stage of a green card application, takes almost three years in New York City and almost four years in Boston.
For applicants who are married to U.S. citizens, initial filing can take months. Children of U.S. citizens wait up to five years for processing to begin, whilst siblings face a wait of up to 12 years, due to the strict annual limits on the numbers of family visas issued.
Once the final processing stage begins, however, many applicants are unaware that they have the power to speed up the process significantly.
Less than 120 miles north of New York City in Hartford, Ct. final processing of a green card application takes just two months. Across the Hudson River in Newark, N.J. processing takes just over a year.
“If you’re anxious to get it processed, you could move to a city where the processing time is shorter,” according to Liam Boyle of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Woodlawn.
“If people are willing to move then there’s no reason why they can’t,” he said. “Once it gets to the final green card processing stage, everyone is the same regardless of whether they filed as a spouse or a family member,” according to John Quill, an immigration attorney with Boston Office of Immigration.
“Applications are filed at the local U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices and there can be a big difference between waiting times in different states.”
The numbers of applications to each office determines the waiting period, which explains why immigrant strongholds like Boston, New York and Tampa, FL. offices have the largest backlogs.
On the other hand, couples or family applicants living in places like Buffalo, N.Y. or Portland, Ore. are likely to wait less than a year between processing their I-485 files and being issued with green cards.
“It is possible,” Boyle said. “I know of one couple who moved to Oregon because it has a shorter waiting period [five months]. Another couple are going through the process in North Carolina. Even if you move to New Jersey the waiting list is significantly shorter.”
Some immigration workers say more applicants living in New York and Boston might consider moving if they were aware of how much shorter waiting times were in other cities.
“Questions sometimes come in from people about which states have shorter waiting times,” according to Kieran O’Sullivan of the Boston Irish Immigration Center.
“But most people I know haven’t bothered to do it; they think it’s too big a hassle,” he said.
Many applicants are willing to wait out the final stage of green card processing, but for others, speeding up the process has the potential to make life a lot easier.
“In the final phase, most applications have employment rights and social security numbers, so they can work,” said Quill.
“But there are cases where someone can’t travel which would motivate them to move somewhere their application would be processed more quickly.”
Bearing in mind that a person must live in a U.S. city for at least three months in order to become a resident, Quill thinks couples or families with a degree of mobility have nothing to lose by weighing up their options.
“The place where they marry wouldn’t make a difference,” he said. “What matters is that they have to meet residency requirements.”

Visa processing times

Fastest five cities
1 – Hartford, CT – 2 months
2 – Rochester/Syracuse/Buffalo, NY – 3 months
3 – San Antonio, TX – 4 months
4 – San Diego/Chula Vista, CA – 4 months
5 – Helena, MT – five months

Slowest five cities
1 – Boston, MA – three years, 9 months
2 – New York City – two years, nine months
3 – Orlando, FL – two years, 7 months
4 – Tampa, FL two years, two months.
5 – Charleston, SC – two years

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services