GREEN CARD 101

■ Green cards, or permanent resident cards, allow non-U.S. citizens to permanently live and work anywhere in the U.S.

■ All green card holders can apply for U.S. citizenship after five years.

■ Every year, the U.S. government issues more than a million green cards. Most go to family members of U.S. citizens.

■ 140,000 green cards are allotted every year for immigrant workers. No more than 7% of these green cards can go to recipients from a single country.

■ Because there are so many high-skilled Indian workers in the U.S. applying for employment-based green cards, the yearly Indian “quota” fills up quickly. As a result, Indian nationals face longer wait times than immigrants from other countries, even if they’ve been living in the U.S. for many more years.