Category: Tech news

The state may emit much more of the greenhouse gas than expected. But a new survey has revealed the top offenders, making leaks easier to control.

Opinion: Our new study on Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism during the 2018 midterms confirms we’re on a path of digital dystopia.

By holding particular cryptocurrencies in a Coinbase account, the exchange says you’ll receive set returns independent of the market’s spikes.

California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra has accused Facebook of “continuing to drag its feet” by failing to provide documents to the state’s investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

The attorney general said in a court filing Wednesday that Facebook had provided a “patently deficient” response to two sets of subpoenas for the previously undisclosed investigation started more than a year ago. “Facebook has provided no answers for nineteen interrogatories and produced no documents in response to six document requests,” the filing said.

Among the documents sought are communications by executives, including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and documentation relating to the company’s privacy changes.

The filing said the social media giant was “failing to comply with lawfully issued subpoenas and interrogatories” for what the attorney general says involves “serious allegations of unlawful business practices by one of the richest companies in the world,” referring to Facebook.

Becerra is now asking a court to compel Facebook to produce the documents.

The now-defunct Cambridge Analytica scraped tens of millions of Facebook profiles as part of an effort to help the Trump presidential campaign decide which swing voters to target with election-related advertising. Facebook banned the analytics and voter data firm following the unauthorized scraping. Facebook was later fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for violating a privacy decree in 2012, which demanded that the company engage in better privacy protections of its users’ data.

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Following the death of five people at a Halloween party hosted at a California Airbnb rental, and a scathing Vice report outlining Airbnb’s failure to prevent nation-wide scams, the company says it will begin verifying all seven million of its listings.

Airbnb properties will soon be verified for accuracy of photos, addresses, listing details, cleanliness, safety and basic home amenities, according to a company-wide email sent by Airbnb co-founder and chief executive officer Brian Chesky on Wednesday. All rentals that meet the company’s new standards will be “clearly labeled” by December 15, 2020, he notes. Beginning next month, Airbnb will rebook or refund guests who check into rentals that do not meet the new accuracy standards.

The long-awaited updates to Airbnb’s security measures come months before the company plans to complete an initial public offering or direct listing and just days after Chesky announced the business would ban “party houses,” and work harder to combat unauthorized parties and abusive host and guest conduct.

“We believe that trust on the internet begins with verifying the accuracy of the information on internet platforms, and we believe that this is an important step for our industry,” Chesky said in the staff email.

Airbnb also will launch a 24/7 Neighbor Hotline, which will allow guests to reach a real Airbnb employee from any location at any time. The company will fully roll-out the service next year. Finally, Airbnb will expand its screening of potentially high-risk reservations globally next year.

The new efforts are led by Margaret Richardson, Airbnb’s vice president of trust, who Chesky tasked with rapidly formulating a response to the Halloween party massacre. The company has also tapped Charles Ramsey, former chief of the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. police departments, and Ronald Davis, the former chief of the East Palo Alto police department, to advise the projects.

“More than eleven years after Joe, Nate, and I started Airbnb, I have been asked what has surprised me most about the world,” Chesky writes. “My answer is two things: that people are, in fact, fundamentally good, and that we are 99% the same. We still believe this, and with these changes, we hope to continue to demonstrate this to the world.”

As history tells us, the break-up of “Big Oil” and “Big Telco” in the past led to more competition and innovation. What to do in the era of “Big Tech?” Living in 2019, we know more than ever before about how Big Tech, particularly in the shape of Facebook, Twitter and Google — as the prime arbiters of information and social media online — have shaped and affected politics today. At the same time, we’re about to face several huge sea-changes in the global system, not least of which will be the next U.S. election, Brexit, the rise of China and challenges of the climate crisis.

Speaking at Web Summit in Lisbon this week, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair brought out a new report from the Institute which bears his name to address the turmoil of Western politics from the prism of the backlash against globalisation after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the rise of populist movements and the effects technology is having on society, politicians and policymakers.

A policy framework designed for the offline world may have served many people well for many decades, but in an age of exponential technology, is it fit for purpose?

Platform companies like Facebook, aggregators like Google, Amazon and Uber have, says the Institute, stripped traditional gatekeepers of their power, delivered real progress for consumers and businesses and increased many freedoms. But they have also brought significant economic upheaval and heightened cultural pressures, along with huge unknowns about the future. The tech wolf has also now concentrated power in the hands of a relatively small number of companies that “all too often wield it clumsily and without sufficient legitimacy.”

This comes at a time when the West’s lead on technology is “facing a clear and present challenge from determined Russian aggression and a concerted push from China to take a global lead in AI.”

Blair’s Institute makes it plain in its new report (“A New Deal for Big Tech: Next-Generation Regulation Fit for the Internet Age”) that the current set of regulations designed for legacy industries is “a poor fit for the pace and scale of the Internet” and a new approach, based on stronger accountability coupled with more freedom to innovate, might be the best way to align private incentives with the public interest.

Blair is calling for a “new generation of regulator” that can take an international outlook, have technical expertise comparable with the big tech companies and be fluent in the same fundamentals of “Big Tech.”

But how? How is all this going to operate? What are Blair’s views on Russia, disinformation on Facebook and Twitter, and whether tech will have an effect on the outcome of Brexit?

TechCrunch sat down with Mr Blair for the following, exclusive, interview.

Mike Butcher (MB): You’ve released this new report into regulating Big Tech. Do you want to outline its main thrust?

Tony Blair (TB): Essentially what we’re saying is: there’s no way “big tech” is going to avoid regulation, and regulation that will treat them almost like public utilities because of their power, their reach and their impact. But the question is about getting the right form of regulation. So what we’re trying to do is to make sure that it’s the kind of regulation of big tech that recognizes that [big tech has] actually brought enormous benefits to people, but at the same time protects people, whether it’s on issues around privacy, competition [and] making sure that consumers get adequate access — all of those types of things — and translate this into a set of proper principles. What I say to the big tech companies is that even though you may not want to have a lot to do with politics, as you can see — and I’ve been saying this for several years to them — it’s going to come your way. Because you’re just too powerful not to be under some system of objective regulation, and you can’t just regulate yourselves.

MB: On that note, many big tech companies have actually called for regulation, but do you think that’s a “sop” to governments in order to allow them to build even bigger monopolies? Because then everybody will have to be regulated, including smaller companies?

TB: I think the whole point about regulation is that it can be bad or it can be good. So you really want to make sure that the regulation you’re introducing is not an imposition on the companies for providing the service they do, but it is giving people proper protection and it’s recognizing, as I say, the power that these companies have. People won’t find it acceptable that things continue without proper regulation. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg comes out in favor of regulation… I mean, I think that’s good. But the question is what type of regulation. And there, obviously, he and Facebook should have an input. But they can’t decide that. That’s — in the end — got to be decided by policymakers. And one thing my institute — which Chris [Chris Yiu, executive director, Technology and Public Policy] heads up, which is based in London but has strong links in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the world — is to say there needs to be a dialogue between what I call the “change-makers” and the policy-makers that leads to good policy.

MB: But national governments making policy on their own surely isn’t going to address the issue, given Big Tech is global? What institutions can address this? Some sort of supranational body?

TB: Well, I think, ultimately, on certain issues you’ll need a global agreement. For example cybersecurity, I think we’ll, for sure, need that.

MB: There’s no “United Nations Declaration” for arms control on cybersecurity for instance.

TB: The one thing I’m noticing about cyber, even in the last year… the number of people I meet whose companies have been subject to actual attacks… In the end, if every country is going to want to protect its business and every country will recognize ultimately that if the big players don’t come together and agree some rules then… I mean, it’s just anarchy.

In regards to regulation, I would like to see Europe and America create a new transatlantic partnership around regulation. This is one of the reasons I’m so opposed to Brexit… You are taking Britain out of that conversation with Europe at the very time that it needs to be in it.

MB: The pace of change at this point is now exponential. The rise of AI, quantum computing etc. Politicians have known about the rapid, changing nature of technology for a number of years. What do you think has been stopping them from grappling with the subject?

TB: It’s partly generational. It’s partly because politicians don’t often understand the technology. It is actually technical. It requires hard work. Some of it is like rocket science. It’s not easy. So that’s part of the problem. And the other problem is that I think the change-makers — the tech developers — their basic attitude, often, to government, is just to just “keep away from it.” And I completely get it. But it’s not sensible. They’ve got to engage with government today, and that’s why we’re trying, through the Institute, to establish that dialogue. And you know, if that doesn’t happen, you’ll find, as we did during the 19th-century industrial revolution, how long it took politics to catch up with the fact that the world was being revolutionized. It took decades to catch up. For a long time, society was subject to one change, and politics was still debating things that were from a different era. I mean, if you look at British politics today, with this debate where, on one side is Brexit, one on the other side is — basically — who spends more money in the next Parliament… we could have had this debate at any point in the last 30 years. It’s got no relevance, really, to how the world’s changing.

MB: Are you concerned about how social media has enabled populism?

TB: Yes, I think social media is a revolutionary phenomenon and it’s revolutionized everything, including politics. And we’ve got to work out ways of dealing with that because it is rupturing politics in a serious way.

The problem is that political leaders are always trying to “step out in front,” but not so much that they lose touch with their people. So that’s a calibration, all the time, between leadership and listening. If the “listening” part of it becomes “instrumentalized” through social media, then the risk is that politicians just lose their compass. They don’t know where they’re going, they are just buffeted by waves of opinion. And then, if you’re not careful, what happens is that the people who rise to the top in those circumstances are the people who ride that.

MB: Should Twitter shut down Trump’s account?

TB: Well how’s that going to help? I mean, honestly, I don’t think that’s relevant.

MB: Facebook has said it’s going to be changing its policy on political advertising, and won’t be regulating disinformation on political ads. What’s your opinion on that?

TB: My opinion is that it’s very hard, if you’re Facebook, to stop people having political ads. But, to me, the the whole concept that Facebook is “self patrolling” as to what should come on the internet or not, is an indication of why you need proper regulation. The decision as to whether something’s fit for consumption or not shouldn’t be left to a few thousand people employed by Facebook, you know, sitting and looking at crazy stuff on Facebook all day. I mean, this is to me just a further indication of why you’ve got to put everything within a proper system of regulation. Otherwise, it’s not actually fair to ask the company to do that. How can they decide what is a political ad or not? But someone should.

MB: What do you think of Twitter’s decision not to take any political advertising?

TB: In some ways I understand that, and in some ways I welcome that, but I think Facebook’s in a slightly different position just in terms of scale, right?

MB: China is deploying technology in its society at a huge, exponential rate, in terms of things like facial recognition and the surveillance of its population. Its ability to hoover-up all this data is effectively giving it enormous power to create, possibly, the next, powerful AI, because the more data you have the more you can improve an AI. Do you think that the Western approach, with its tradition of more democratic institutions that have moved more slowly than a command-and-control system, means that we are effectively going to be left behind by political systems that err towards the more dictatorial?

TB: Well I think there’s a huge debate that’s going to go on about China, more generally, in the West, which is what I call the debate about whether you “decouple.” Do you accept that there’s two systems that are going to remain very distinct, also in technology? This is part of what underpins the Huawei debate regarding 5G. Or do you try to get to what Henry Kissinger calls a form of “cooperative competition?” Now, I prefer the latter, not the former course, because I think decoupling is very difficult. But, what that means, in my view, is that the West has got to get its act together, because otherwise China will achieve superiority in AI and, in some regards, it already is. If you think of all the devices that we use in the West that are Chinese… You can see this with [the rise of] TikTok, for instance.

MB: The U.K. general election is now on and people are using technology to “get out the vote.” There is a lot of talk about “tactical voting” and lots of tactical voting recommendation websites appearing. Do you favour any particular approach?

TB: So, here’s where technology obviously has a beneficial purpose. If people decide that they want to vote tactically — and I completely understand that because of Brexit being mixed up [in the election], and frankly, dissatisfaction with both main parties — then web sites that tell you how to do that intelligently and provide the information, then… great. You’ve got ones from Best For Britain, People’s Vote, Gina Miller has one and there are others. Yeah, fine, people should look at them I think.

MB: Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has been prevented by Number 10 from releasing its intelligence report and it allegedly contains information about how Russia affected British politics and society using technological means in the last few years. What are your concerns about Russia’s incursion into U.K. politics using technology?

TB: I think this is not just a Russian question, although there’s been a lot of focus on what Russia has done. You’ve got to put all of this out on the table and I think, again, Western governments should be cooperating together to say… if there is outside interference — and I don’t really know the scale of it because you’ve got to go into the detail — how people are influencing media, how people are using techniques to try and influence voters, from the outside, trying to destabilize your politics… all of it should be out in the open. Because that’s the best way of stopping it, and then you can take action against people who are doing it. But this is another reason why I think this is a slightly different form of cybersecurity, if you like, but it’s somewhat akin to it. Because, in the end, if you’ve got people, for example, changing their votes — particularly in tight-run elections — changing their votes on the basis of misinformation that’s coming from a foreign government that’s deliberately trying to destabilize your politics, then at least you should know about it. Now, this is going to be a big big issue for the future.

Microsoft is setting itself some high goals for its new Chromium-based Edge browser. As Chuck Friedman, the corporate vice president for Edge told me, he wants Edge to hit one billion users — a number that would start to rival Chrome’s numbers. First, though, Friedman’s team has to get version 1.0 of Edge out to users in January.

It’s no secret that Microsoft went to Chromium out of a bit of desperation. Indeed, Friedman, who joined the team about two years ago, called it an “existential crisis,” brought about by questions about why users would even want to use the old Edge. “When I got brought in, we almost had this existential crisis of, okay, what do we want to do? There was sort of this moment of like, why Edge? Why would users choose that? Were we delivering on meaningful problems?” At the time, he didn’t really have an answer to those questions, so the team went back to the basics to figure out what value Microsoft specifically could deliver in the browser space — and whether there was even a role for Edge going forward.

The fact that Friedman ran the program management team for the Windows 10 user experience — trying to overcome the missteps of Windows 8 — before running the Edge product team also clearly shows how important a product this is for Microsoft.

Friedman argues that there’s plenty of work left to do in the browser space. “There’s an emerging new set of problems that felt like they had legs,” he told me. “And then it wasn’t about solving the problems of the last five years, it was about solving the problems of the next five.” To do so, the team had to move past the original Edge’s issues with compatibility — while still acknowledging that at least in the work environment, the browser still had to be compatible with the legacy web.

Clearly, privacy is top of mind for anybody in the web browser business, Microsoft included. Friedman noted that while people were generally aware of the privacy issues that come with surfing the web, they didn’t have the tools to protect themselves. “We sort of reached this point where we recognize the promise of the web, open access to all the world’s information, feels great, but the price of all of your information as part of that body wasn’t OK,” Friedman said. And so that, too, became a focus for the team, but looking at all of these issues together — combined with an additional focus on security — the Edge team then looked at how all of this fits in with the entire Microsoft suite. “It’s not just about the operating system. It’s not just about search. But it’s actually about the full M365, the combination of the operating system, plus security, plus the productivity tools.”

But Friedman also echoed something I’ve heard from Google’s Chrome team, and that is that the web today heavily depends on an advertising model that, at least for the time being, is the main income source for most of the companies that are publishing on the web. That can be a hard balance to strike. The way Microsoft is approaching this is by focusing on transparency. “The user should know where their data is and they don’t know what the data is and how it’s being used,” he explained. So users should have the ability to know how their data is being used and have control over it.

“There are those in our industry that think we absolutely should go to a point of extreme privacy and control. And I think there is a small set of users who prefer that. I also think that there’s a certain element of that that breaks the web. And I think that it has the potential to undermine the ability for publications to be able to monetize in a way that is reasonable.” He also argues that for users, about half prefer targeted ads versus non-targeted ads — but what makes them uncomfortable is to not have control over it.

In its browser, Microsoft defaults to blocking third-party cookies. To do so, it uses the same whitelist as Mozilla, but it also regularly updates this list when a site can demonstrate that it gives users the ability to delete their data — and with that, it hopes to encourage a wider range of players in the advertising industry to offer users these controls.

Edge, however is also very much a tool for business users, and so the team also started looking at how it could improve overall productivity in the browser for these users as well as consumers. That, for example, is where the idea of Collections came from, Microsoft’s take on what’s something of a hybrid between bookmarks, scratch pads and reading lists, which aren’t yet ready for a wider roll-out, but which are available behind a flag in the more experimental canary builds of Edge.

But the team also found that users often copy and paste content from Edge to Office products — so expect the company to do more in this area going forward. “We do a better job of integrating around collaboration with Microsoft Office properties who all have great web experiences. But, frankly, we need to meet them partway and help them do more. I’m excited for an opportunity of almost a relaunch of the Office web properties with the browser. There’s more innovative work we can do there.”

Another area the team is looking at is tab management. “Tab chaos is an interesting problem. It still exists. I don’t think anybody’s done a great job at solving it,” Friedman said. What exactly that will look like, though, remains to be seen.

One thing we won’t see right away, though, is an integration with Cortana. That’s part of the current pre-Chromium version of Edge, but it’s something Friedman doesn’t seem quite ready to bring to the new version yet. To be useful in the browser, he argues, a personal assistant has to be right most of the time. But what that will look like in the new Edge remains to be seen. He thinks there’s potential there, but what a real-world implementation would look like isn’t clear yet.

Once version 1.0 ships, the team plans to launch about two or three major new features in the browser every year, with Collections likely being the first.

Friedman also acknowledged that there are still lots of users who use Edge currently. There are about 150 million of those. And they use Edge because it’s the browser that comes with Windows. These “low-confidence users,” as Friedman described them, aren’t all that likely to download a different browser if the new Edge is too radical a departure. Instead, they’ll go out and buy a different device, like an iPad, that they view as a simpler experience.

But for more experienced users, Microsoft is obviously setting up Edge as an alternative to Chrome. The team is trying to provide them a relatively friction-less pathway to switch. Finding that balance is tricky, but Friedman thinks it’s possible, in part thanks to his work on Windows.

“My last gig was working on Win 10. I ran the product team for the core user experience for Windows 10. Sort of inherited the Windows 7 and 8 code base and said: Okay, how do we bring those users together in a way that ends up making both of them feel good about the product. It was a similarly interesting challenge, where you have […] to have true empathy for users that come from a lot of different spaces.”

Tinder’s big experiment with interactive content — the recently launched in-app series called “Swipe Night” — was a success. According to Tinder parent company Match during its Q3 earnings this week, “millions” of Tinder users tuned in to watch the show’s episodes during its run in October, and this drove double-digit increases in both matches and messages. As a result, Match confirmed its plans to launch Tinder’s new show outside the U.S. in early 2020. 

Swipe Night’s launch was something of a departure for the dating app, whose primary focus has been on connecting users for dating and other more casual affairs.

The new series presented users with something else to do in the Tinder app beyond just swiping on potential matches. Instead, you swiped on a story.

Presented in a “choose-your-own-adventure”- style format that’s been popularized by Netflix, YouTube and others, Swipe Night asked users to make decisions to advance a narrative that followed a group of friends in an “apocalyptic adventure.”

The moral and practical choices you made during Swipe Night would then be shown on your profile as a conversation starter, or as just another signal as to whether or not a match was right for you. After all, they say that the best relationships come from those who share common values, not necessarily common interests. And Swipe Night helped to uncover aspects to someone’s personality that a profile would not — like whether you’d cover for a friend who cheated, or tell your other friend who was the one being cheated on?

The five-minute episodes ran every Sunday night in October from 6 PM to midnight.

Though early reports on Tinder’s plans had somewhat dramatically described Swipe Night as Tinder’s launch into streaming video, it’s more accurate to call Swipe Night an engagement booster for an app from which many people often find themselves needing a break. Specifically, it could help Tinder address issues around declines in open rates or sessions per user — metrics that often hide behind what otherwise looks like steady growth. (Tinder, for example, added another 437,000 subscribers in the quarter, leading to 5.7 million average subscribers in Q3).

Ahead of earnings, there were already signs that Swipe Night was succeeding in its efforts to boost engagement.

Tinder said in late October that matches on its app jumped 26% compared to a typical Sunday night, and messages increased 12%.

On Tinder’s earnings call with investors, Match presented some updated metrics. The company said Swipe Night led to a 20% to 25% increase in “likes” and a 30% increase in matches. And the elevated conversation levels that resulted from user participation continued for days after each episode aired. Also importantly, the series helped boost female engagement in the app.

“This really extended our appeal and resonated with Gen Z users,” said Match CEO Mandy Ginsberg. “This effort demonstrates the kind of creativity and team we have at Tinder and the kind of effort that we’re willing to make.”

The company says it will make Season 1 of Swipe Night (a hint there’s more to come) available soon as an on-demand experience, and will roll out the product to international markets early next year.

Swipe Night isn’t the only video product Match Group has in the works. In other Match-owned dating apps, Plenty of Fish and Twoo, the company is starting to test live streaming broadcasts. But these are created by the app’s users, not as a polished, professional product from the company itself.

Match had reported better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter, with earnings of 51 cents per share — above analysts’ expectations for earnings of 42 cents per share. Match’s revenue was $541 million, in line with Wall Street’s expectations.

But its fourth-quarter guidance came in lower than expectations ($545 million-$555 million, below the projected $559.3 million), sending the stock dropping. Match said it would have to take on about $10 million in expenses related to it being spun out from parent company IAC.

Google has partnered with mobile security firms ESET, Lookout and Zimperium to combat the scourge of malicious Android apps that sneak into the Google Play app store.

The announcement came Wednesday, with each company confirming their part in the newly created App Defense Alliance. Google said it’s working with the companies to “stop bad apps before they reach users’ devices.”

The search giant has struggled to fight against malicious apps in recent years. Although apps are screened for malware and other malicious components before apps are allowed into Google Play, the search and mobile giant has been accused of not doing enough to weed out malicious apps before they make it to users’ devices.

Google said earlier this year that just 0.04% of all Android apps downloaded from Google Play were considered potentially harmful apps — or about 30 million potentially malicious apps.

Yet, it remains an ongoing problem.

ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium have all contributed to the discovery — and eventual takedown — of hundreds of malicious apps on Google Play in recent years.

But each time Google takes down a suspicious or malicious app from Google Play, the thousands or millions of users with the app installed on their phone remain vulnerable. The apps are not removed from devices, continuing to put users at risk.

By integrating its Google Play Protect technology, which serves as Android’s built-in antimalware engine, with each of its partners’ scanning engines, the collective effort will help to better screen apps before they are approved for users to download.

Google said that knowledge sharing and industry collaboration are “important” to combat rising mobile app threats.

Obsidian Entertainment’s latest has far too many pointless quests.

The newly formed App Defense Alliance will try to solve a malware problem that has bedeviled the Play Store since inception.

The absurd meme says a lot about generational divides. OK, boomer?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the company will unveil its all-electric “cybertruck” November 21 in Los Angeles near the serial entrepreneur’s other company, SpaceX.

The date just so happens to coincide with the LA Auto Show. However, this is a Tesla event and not associated with the auto show in downtown Los Angeles.

Instead, it appears Musk is tying the reveal on the same date that’s listed in the opening title for Blade Runner. Hmmm … perhaps Musk wants us to walk away mumbling to ourselves, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”

Musk has talked about producing an all-electric pickup truck for years now. In December, Musk resurrected the idea, saying that Tesla might have a prototype to unveil in 2019.

Musk mentioned on Twitter the desire to produce a pickup truck way back in April 2017, before the first Model 3 sedans had been handed over to customers and the CEO had entered production hell. At the time, Musk tweeted that a pickup truck would be unveiled in 18 to 24 months.

Musk had hoped to unveil the truck this summer, but it was pushed back to fall.

Little is known about what this cybertruck will look like, although there has been plenty of speculation. In an earnings call in January, Musk said it will be “unique.”

Last month, Musk said the cybertruck doesn’t look like anything he’s seen on the internet, a reference to the numerous speculative renderings out there.

Securing a green card can feel overwhelming for people in Silicon Valley who were born in India and China. But with the right help and guidance from a skilled immigration attorney, the process can be simpler, smoother and more successful.

Limits written into existing immigration laws on both the number of green cards issued each year, as well as the number of green cards available based on country of origin, leave some waiting half a century or more for a green card, with people from India and China facing the longest wait times for employment-based green cards.

In this fiscal year, which ended on October 31, 226,000 family-sponsored green cards and 141,918 employment-based green cards were available. And the per-country cap, which is the maximum number of green cards available to individuals born in a particular country, was 25,754. 

Although these U.S. laws pose an extra challenge for people born in countries with the highest demand for green cards, if you were born in India or China, there are some things you can do to mitigate this wait.

Differentiate yourself

The EB-1 green card is considered the “first preference” for those who’ll receive offers for employment-based green cards. It offers three unique and accelerated sub-paths: 

• EB-1A green card for individuals of extraordinary ability 
• EB-1B green card for outstanding researchers and professors
• EB-1C green card for multinational managers and executives

The EB-1A green card for extraordinary ability does not require an employer sponsor or even a job offer, which means it’s one of the few self-petition green cards. To demonstrate eligibility, you must be able to show you have extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics and that you and your work have received national or international acclaim. 

Individuals who apply for the EB-1A do not need to obtain labor certification (as required of employers). That means the process is simpler and can be much faster than typical employment-based green cards. Also, an individual applicant may have more flexibility to change jobs than if an employer applied on their behalf.

The EB-1B green card for outstanding researchers and professors requires an employer to sponsor you. Candidates for the EB-1B green card must demonstrate great achievements in their academic field. 

And finally, the EB-1C green card for multinational managers and executives enables an employer to bring an executive or manager who has been working abroad over to the U.S. to live and work. The EB-1C candidate must have worked outside the U.S. for the employer for at least one year.

This Cato Institute analysis estimates individuals born in China and India face waiting eight and nine years, respectively, for an EB-1 green card. Despite the small and growing backlog for EB-1 green cards for individuals born in China and India, it still remains one of the quicker options.

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