Canada or USA?

[jairichi]

If you are from India, China and Mexico, you will have to wait for some time before you get the GC. This is because only a fixed number of GCs are allowed per country and there is a queue that you need to get in when you apply.
Depending on your profile, you will have a longer queue within the group. There are 3 buckets and the approximate waiting times for Indians are:
1. EB1 - If you have a Ph D - Around 1 year
2. EB2 - If you masters and have good experience - Around 5-6 years
3. EB3 - Others - 10 to 12 years.
All number of years above are from my memory. But the structure is the same for all countries. You can google and find current waiting times.

Again small corrections here
1. EB1 is not for everyone who has a PhD. It has 3 categories. One for multinational managers, two for people with extraordinary ability and three for outstanding professors and researchers. A GC is approved within 6 months.
2. EB2 - For people other than with country of birth India and China the processing time is 6 months. For India 8 years.
3. EB3 - Same duration applies similar to EB3. For India 12 years.

Mexico is current processing for EB1 and EB2. A few months waiting list for EB3.

https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2016/visa-bulletin-for-may-2016.html

There is family based GC too.

 

[krishere1982]

Again small corrections here
1. EB1 is not for everyone who has a PhD. It has 3 categories. One for multinational managers, two for people with extraordinary ability and three for outstanding professors and researchers. A GC is approved within 6 months.
2. EB2 - For people other than with country of birth India and China the processing time is 6 months. For India 8 years.
3. EB3 - Same duration applies similar to EB3. For India 12 years.

Mexico is current processing for EB1 and EB2. A few months waiting list for EB3.

https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2016/visa-bulletin-for-may-2016.html

There is family based GC too.

I would like to add my 2 cents to the above EB2 and EB3 wait times for getting GC. Just looking at the current processing times, it might seem that EB2 folks might have to wait only 8 years and EB3 for 12 years, but the reality is, the processing times don't go forward in a linear fashion. For eg., for EB3, the processing times usually moves forward 2 weeks each month and then there has been times when the processing times have retrogressed too, for both EB2 and EB3.

So the wait times for GC in EB2 and EB3 is way more than 8 or 12 years respectively.

But yeah, there are other ways to obtain GC - through investment and through marriage.