5 countries are driving the EB-2 NIW surge. Here’s why.
If you have an advanced degree and work that benefits the United States in a real way, the EB-2 National Interest Waiver may be one of the most overlooked green card paths available to you. It doesn’t require an employer to sponsor it, it bypasses PERM, and demand is growing fast.
In FY 2025, USCIS approved 19,532 of the 35,395 NIW petitions it adjudicated. Manifest Law immigration attorney Ana Gabriela Urizar walks through the five countries that produced the most approved applicants, and what’s driving the numbers in each.
1. China
China produced the most NIW approvals of any country in FY 2025 by a wide margin, with 5,091 approvals and 12,081 petitions filed.
Urizar says that much of this volume may be due to how heavily the country invests in research. China’s R&D spending grew by 8.7% in 2023, far outpacing the U.S. (1.7%) and the European Union (1.6%).
These investments help fuel a pipeline of Chinese graduate students, many of whom pursue graduate degrees abroad. Students from China earned 5,981 U.S. science and engineering doctorates in 2023, more than the next four countries combined.
These graduates often work in fields that fall under national U.S. interests, including artificial intelligence and biotechnology. About 83% of Chinese S&E doctorate recipients on temporary visas still live in the U.S. five years after graduation, and many of those graduates use the NIW to convert their temporary status into a green card.
2. India
India ranked second among NIW-producing countries in FY 2025, with 2,892 approvals and 9,196 petitions filed.
In 2023, Indian nationals earned the second-highest number of U.S. science and engineering doctorates. Most of these Ph.D. graduates try to remain in the country long-term, with 87% of Indians who finished STEM doctorates between 2000 and 2015 still living in the U.S.
The NIW is especially popular among Indian applicants because of the EB-2 backlog, according to Urizar. India has the longest priority date wait of any country in this category, with current applicants waiting more than a decade in the queue.
The NIW doesn’t shorten that wait, but it lets applicants bypass the yearslong PERM labor certification process. This allows them to lock in a priority date earlier, which matters more for Indians than for almost any other nationality.
3. Iran
Iran ranked third on the list in FY 2025, with 1,681 approvals and 3,871 petitions filed.
The country ranks 19th globally for scientific publications, ahead of other developed nations like Sweden and Taiwan. Urizar says the volume of Iranian NIW filings reflects how much of that talent ends up building careers in the U.S. International sanctions, limited research funding, and government restrictions on academics have pushed researchers and physicians out of the country for decades, and the World Bank has put the annual cost to Iran’s economy at roughly $50 billion.
These circumstances can help explain why so many Iranian Ph.D. students don’t want to leave the U.S. Fewer than 8% of Iranian doctoral recipients on temporary visas told the National Science Foundation they intended to return home, one of the lowest rates of any nationality.
For these graduates, the NIW lowers the barrier of entry because it doesn’t require an employer sponsor. That’s a big deal for Iranian applicants, whose nationality can make it hard to find someone to file on their behalf even when their qualifications are strong.
4. Nigeria
Nigeria came in fourth in FY 2025, with 1,187 approvals and 3,584 petitions filed.
Nigerians are among the most educated immigrant groups in the United States. Around 29% of Nigerian nationals in the U.S. hold a master’s, Ph.D., or graduate-level professional credential, compared to 11% of the general U.S. population. The EB-2 category already requires applicants to hold an advanced degree, and Urizar notes that a large share of these immigrants clear that bar before they ever start the petition.
5. Bangladesh
Bangladesh ranked fifth in FY 2025, with 878 approvals and 2,621 petitions filed.
Bangladesh spent just 0.30% of its GDP on research and development between 2020 and 2021, one of the lowest rates in the world. That gap pushes its graduate students toward foreign universities, with more than 20,000 Bangladeshi students enrolled at U.S. universities in the 2024-25 academic year — an all-time high and a 17.9% jump over the prior year.
Urizar sees this pipeline as the structural driver behind Bangladesh’s NIW approvals, especially since many of these nationals enter on temporary visas and have one of the highest “definite commitment to stay” rates.
How this list was calculated
This list was calculated using the four FY 2025 quarterly releases of USCIS’s Form I-140 data. Specifically, country rankings come from the National Interest Waiver column on the “Approvals by Beneficiary Country of Birth” sheet, summed across all four quarters. Filing counts come from the matching “Receipts by Beneficiary Country of Birth” sheet, summed the same way.
USCIS does not publish per-country denial counts in its quarterly data, so we did not calculate per-country approval rates.
What this means if you’re thinking about the EB-2 NIW
Foreign nationals from the five countries on this list reach the EB-2 NIW through very different routes. Some lean on STEM pipelines, while others reflect domestic instability or fields the U.S. treats as national priorities. What unites them is that their applicants meet the bar that the category sets.
For Urizar, what makes the NIW stand out is that it rewards merit and measurable impact instead of employer sponsorship. That makes it one of the most flexible green card paths in the U.S. system, she says, and it puts the focus on what an applicant can show rather than where they were born.
This story was produced by Manifest Law and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
