Hi Bharath,

Thanks for reading my article. I would encourage you to read the full version of the article available here. There you can find the source of the “479,152” figure.

If you even read this article carefully, you would notice that it features green card statistics for the Fiscal Year 2018, which show that, among other things, in that year 139,483 employment-based green cards were issued, which means virtually none of the 140,000 green cards were left unused. The statistics further show that “the three countries with the largest number of green cards received were India (22,524, 16.14%), China and Taiwan (21,188, 15.19%), and South Korea (10,684, 7.66%). […] A more detailed look at the number of green cards received by Indian nationals shows that they received 10,967 (27.75%), 4,096 (10.08%), and 6,112 (16.55%) of the total number of green cards in the EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories, respectively.”

Since you brought up that some 300,000 green cards have been left unused because of the per-country caps, I would appreciate it if you could provide a source for your claim as well. U.S. government data shows that your claim is patently false, but maybe you have a more reliable source.