Recently we published some demographic and employer sponsor statistic data about Green Cards and H-1B Visas/E-3 Visas to give foreigners and folks insight into how the whole US Immigration process operates and hopefully helps them in their journey to live and work in the US.

Today we are going to look briefly at the average salary levels as well as raw number of Permanent Residency applications for the Top 50 countries in 2013. It should be noted that this data is for the employer sponsored Green Cards like EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 and not the family sponsored and other green cards like the Green Card Lottery. This group on an annual basis in terms of Green Cards issued only makes up about 13% of the Green Cards given to foreigners. This is a major issue trying to be addressed in the current US Immigration Reform debate for the US to be more high skill focussed as other countries are with who they give Permanent Residence too.

It is clearly immediately evident as elsewhere with the data, that Indian national dominate the raw total with over 56% of the applications in this annual period. It is also a reason under the current system why the delay for these foreign nationals to get actual Green Cards made available to them can result in waits of 10 years or more.

It is also interesting to see (although small in number) that Lebanon, The Netherlands and Jordan are the Top 3 nations in terms of average salary of their foreign nationals sponsored roles suggested the high skill, experience and specialized desired knowledge of these candidates. Interestingly Asian powerhouses with highly educated societies, Japan and South Korea have amongst the lowest 10 average salaries for their foreign nationals. It is possible in a society like the US where individual and direct salary negotiation is at the heart of the compensation scheme that residents where strong direct negotiation with money and lesser English skills may be a partial cause of this disparity.