For most undocumented people there is no line to get into. Congress caps green cards at numbers that have not matched demand in decades, and no visa category exists for the majority of them at any wait length.

There is no general-purpose immigration line. US law offers a small set of narrow channels: a close family member who is already a citizen or permanent resident, a specific employer sponsoring a specific job, refugee or asylum status, or a lottery. If you do not fit one of those categories, you are not at the back of the line. You are not in a line at all, and no amount of waiting or paperwork will put you in one.

For those who do fit, the caps are the problem. Congress allows 226,000 family-sponsored green cards per year worldwide and at least 140,000 employment-based, with a 7 percent per-country ceiling that treats India and Mexico the same as countries that send a few hundred applicants. The Migration Policy Institute calculated that clearing the backlog of over 4 million people who have already demonstrated eligibility would take 19 years.

The immigration courts are in the same condition — a backlog in the millions, with asylum cases routinely waiting years for a first substantive hearing. The 2025 enforcement package added roughly $170 billion for enforcement and nothing for the courts that are supposed to decide these cases.

So when someone says "do it the right way," the honest response is: name the form. For most of the 11 million people here, there isn't one.