When immigration outlives a human careerWhat does a 179-year waiting list do to a 22-year-old’s idea of the future? It is an almost absurd question. A person can earn a bachelor’s degree, complete a master’s degree, build a career, raise a family and retire within the time that a newly entering Indian applicant could, under one recent projection, theoretically wait for an employment-based green card in America.The number is 179 years. It is not an official U.S. government waiting-time forecast, but a projection by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), based on the size of the employment-based backlog and current rules. NFAP’s corresponding estimate for EB-3 is 38 years. The numbers may change, the law may change and people may leave the queue. But the precise number is almost beside the point. What matters is the mismatch between the time horizon of immigration and the time horizon of a human life. And that raises a question far larger than immigration: What happens to the American Dream after the American degree?The degree was never just a degreeFor generations of ambitious young people around the world, the American dream has followed a familiar sequence: study in America, work in America, build a career in America and, eventually, make America home. That possibility has been part of the calculation behind an extraordinarily expensive decision: leaving home, spending or borrowing large sums of money and investing several years in an American education.The assumption was never simply that an American university would provide a degree. It was that the degree could open a door. For many students, that door led not merely to employment, but potentially to permanence. The 179-year projection forces us to ask what happens when education and immigration begin to separate.What are EB-2 and EB-3?EB-2 and EB-3 are two preference categories within the U.S. employment-based immigrant visa system — routes through which eligible foreign workers can eventually obtain permanent residence, commonly known as a green card. They are fundamentally different from temporary work status such as the H-1B, which can allow a foreign professional to work in America but is not itself permanent residence.EB-2 generally covers professionals with advanced degrees, or people with a bachelor’s degree and substantial progressive experience, as well as certain people with exceptional ability. EB-3 is broader, covering professionals, skilled workers and certain other workers.For Indians, the resulting backlog has become extraordinarily large. NFAP estimates that nearly one million Indians were waiting in EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 at the end of 2025, with the Indian EB-2 backlog alone estimated at more than 731,000. Consider a hypothetical 24-year-old who enters a master’s programme, graduates at 26, begins working at 27 and enters an employment-based green-card process. That person may be building a career in one decade while confronting an immigration timeline measured in several decades. That is not simply a visa problem. It is a life-planning problem.And then there is AIThe immigration question is arriving at the same time as another disruption — one that has nothing to do with immigration. Artificial intelligence is forcing universities everywhere to answer a more fundamental question: What, exactly, is a university degree worth when AI can increasingly perform many of the tasks that a degree once signalled a person had learned to perform?This is not an American question. It is global. A 2026 international survey covering more than 45,000 students and faculty across 35 countries illustrates how widespread AI adoption has become in higher education. Universities are being pushed to rethink curriculum, assessment, academic integrity and employability, while students are entering a world in which the value of knowledge cannot easily be separated from the ability to work with intelligent machines.For an international student, two questions now arrive together: Can I build my future in America? And will the American degree itself retain the value for which I am paying? Immigration is questioning the destination. AI is questioning the proposition.The new currency may be optionalityAn American degree can remain immensely valuable even if the graduate ultimately builds a career elsewhere. The education, research experience, faculty relationships, alumni network and exposure to American companies can travel with the graduate.But if the pathway from education to employment to permanent residence becomes increasingly uncertain, students and families may assign a different value to that degree. Universities across Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe are therefore competing not only on tuition, rankings and academic quality, but also on what happens after graduation.The deeper shift is this: A university does not sell only education. In an international market, it also sells a set of possible futures. As those futures become less predictable, students may increasingly value optionality over permanence.The next generation may therefore become less interested in choosing between “America” and “not America” and more interested in “America plus optionality.” A student could study in Boston, work in California, return to Bengaluru, move to Singapore, join a European company or build a global career from India. The American degree becomes a platform rather than a destination.The geography of higher education is also changingThe traditional model of international education assumed that students had to cross borders to access the institutions they valued. That assumption is beginning to weaken.International universities are increasingly exploring overseas campuses, partnerships and hybrid models that allow their academic brands, programmes and networks to travel closer to students. At the same time, digital learning and AI are making parts of higher education increasingly portable.Whether an education delivered outside a university’s home country carries exactly the same value with employers as one earned on the home campus remains an open question. But the model itself is significant. It suggests that international education can increasingly be separated from international migration.And if AI is simultaneously making the traditional university model more portable, more hybrid and more contested, the geography of higher education may itself begin to change. Immigration is questioning the destination. AI is questioning the proposition. Offshore campuses are questioning the geography.What does the American degree become?For much of the modern era, the American university has represented more than education. It has represented possibility: a qualification, a network, a career opportunity and potentially a bridge to permanent residence.The 179-year projection challenges the assumption that these things will necessarily arrive as a package. AI challenges another assumption — that the traditional university experience will necessarily remain the most effective way to acquire economically valuable knowledge. International campuses challenge a third — that students must cross borders to access global education.Perhaps the future will therefore look different. The American university may remain one of the world’s most powerful educational platforms while becoming less synonymous with permanent settlement. The international student may increasingly arrive not with a single destination in mind, but with a portfolio of possible futures.For decades, the American degree was understood as the beginning of an American future. But what happens when that future can no longer reasonably be assumed within the span of a human life, while AI is simultaneously transforming the definition of a valuable degree?The answer may not be that the world stops wanting an American education. It may be that the world starts wanting something different from it: not simply a passport to America or a promise of permanent residence, but a platform from which a young person can build capabilities, relationships and a life anywhere.America may remain the place where the dream begins — even if it is no longer assumed to be the place where the dream ends. The deeper question is what the American degree itself must become when immigration is questioning the destination, AI is questioning the proposition and the university is no longer confined by geography.That is the real 179-year question.
Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own.