Clarification on Movement of EB Priority Dates
Posted Jan 29, 2000

In last two issues of the Immigration Law Bulletin of the Law Office of Sheela Murthy dated January 10, 2000 and January 17, 2000, we had mentioned the comments of Charles Oppenheim, the official from the U.S. Department of State (DOS), who had opined that there is a likelihood of the Employment based numbers for Indian nationals to retrogress in March 2000. A further clarification of the issue revealed that the U.S. DOS expects the dates to go back to the dates as existed in July 1999 and not to the date of July 1999. Yes, we agree it can be confusing but the DOS believes that the dates could slide back to the levels as existed in July 1999.

This means that the DOS expects the priority dates for Indian nationals to possibly go as far back as October 1, 1998 for Employment based second preference professionals (EB2s) and September 1, 1996 for Employment based third preference professionals (EB3s). Indeed, if this is true, we may be back to the long waiting times just to file the I-485 adjustment of status (AOS) application. The silver lining here is that many of you have recently had the opportunity to file the AOS applications and obtain employment cards for your and your spouse and children above the age of 16 years, where applicable. If INS halts case processing again in the future, we may be able to benefit from their delays where the DOS could again be compelled to make the priority dates current. It would be a shame if INS delays in processing AOS applications again resulted in several tens of thousands of immigrant visas being lost this fiscal year too!!