California Service Center Surfin'

Processing times at the California Service Center are generally very quick these days. Not charged with employment based immigrant petitions, the CSC handles nonimmigrant workers, any nonimmigrant who seeks to change or extend status, family petitions of all variety, religious worker petitions and notably, the alien entrepreneur ($1 million dollar investor) program. The vast majority of petitions are approved between 1 and 6 months! There are very notable exceptions: family based family petitions where there is no current visa availability and the pre-1997 $1 million dollar investor cases, employment based adjustments of status which take two and a half years for professionals and skilled worker applications. This is in addition to the time it takes to get an approved labor certification and/or I-140 petition. Where a labor certification is not required, extraordinary and exceptional ability aliens at least skip the minimum 6 months required for labor certifcation processing, once filed. So as you see, it currently takes at least three years to process green cards for professionals and skilled workers who who aren't extraordinary. The United States was built by extraordinary and ordinary people who all do extraordinary things. It's time immigration reform come to employment based immigration.