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Right. My H1B employer refused to file for a green card right away and wanted to wait a year.

I simply left for another employer who filed it right away.

Did you go through H porting process? How long did it take?

Yes. It took less than a month paying premium. But this was a while ago.

Yeah, these days even with premium processing the processing times are insane.

What do you mean by "these days"? My wife and I have done h1 porting 3 times in total during the pandemic (once during President Trump, others during President Biden), and the process was insanely fast (== 1.5 month total from starting email with lawyer to I797 in hand, including a week at DOL and about a week at USCIS for the I797). We used Premium Processing (never not used it, except during the time it was suspended a few years ago).

I was curious if it has ballooned back up since May 2021.

Haven't done H porting myself (went L1 -> GC), but the time to process for i539+i765 for L2 was 14 months in 2020-2021, which put my spouse on forced unpaid leave for ~8 months. Green card processing times estimates were also insane, so I surmised porting would be affected as well. Glad that it wasn't.

How long did your GC take from start to finish?

A year and a half. More or less. But it was relatively fast.

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