There are several different paths to a green card here in the United States. U.S. immigration law creates a special such path for individuals granted asylum or admitted to the U.S. under refugee status.
How big of a chunk of new green card recipients are asylees or refugees? Green card statistics from 2015 provide some insights on this.
Over a million individuals were granted a U.S. green card in the 2015 fiscal year. Now, asylees/refugees did not make up the largest group of new green card recipients that year. Rather, the group that held the No. 1 position, by a pretty big margin, were individuals who received a green card through family immigration (being sponsored by a qualifying family member). Such individuals received nearly two-thirds of the new green cards from that year.
However, the statistics still point to the asylee/refugee green card route being a major route to permanent residency here in the United States. Reportedly, over 150,000 of the individuals who were granted permanent resident status in the U.S. in the 2015 fiscal year were refugees or asylees. This makes up about one out of every seven of the new green card recipients from that year. It also puts the asylee/refugee route as the second most common green card route for that year.
As this underscores, here in the U.S., many green card seekers are asylees/refugees. When pursuing one of the paths to a U.S. green card, understanding the issues unique to that particular path can be critical. So, legal guidance on the asylee/refugee green card route can be a very important thing for asylees or refugees living here in the U.S. to seek out when they are looking into pursuing a green card.
Source: Pew Research Center, “5 key facts about U.S. lawful immigrants,” D’Vera Cohn, Aug. 3, 2017