October 2006 Visa Bulletin : Employment-Based Priority Dates
Posted Sep 22, 2006
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The U.S. Department of State (DOS) recently released the October 2006 Visa Bulletin. Since the USCIS 2007 fiscal year begins on October 1, 2006, the Visa Bulletin reflects the allocation of a new quota of immigrant visa numbers. MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers should be aware that immigrant visa numbers do not work in the same way as H1B nonimmigrant visa numbers, however. They are not all released and available at one time, at the beginning of the year, but are allocated systematically throughout the year. Thus, the priority date cutoffs do not necessarily take enormous jumps forward at the beginning of each year.
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The news for which many of our readers have been waiting is the cutoff date for Indian nationals in EB2 for October 2006. This category became unavailable in August 2006. For October 2006, the cutoff date is June 15, 2002. Those categories that were current in September 2006 remain current. There are no categories that are "unavailable," but EB3 continues to have cutoff dates in 2001 and 2002, depending on the nationality, with the exception of Schedule A that remains current.
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EB1
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EB1 is current for all areas of chargeability. Thus, all EB1 cases have visa numbers available. It should be noted that this is a limited category. We are often asked by individuals whether they might qualify for EB1. Before considering the possibility of filing a case under EB1, readers should review our September 15, 2006 MurthyBulletin article on this topic, entitled Can I Benefit Under the "Current" EB1 Priority Dates?, available on MurthyDotCom.
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EB2
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EB2 is "current" for all areas of chargeability, except India and mainland China. China has a cutoff date of April 1, 2005. India, as mentioned above, has a cutoff date of June 15, 2002. Those who are chargeable to India, and have priority dates before June 15, 2002, will be eligible to file their I-485s or proceed with consular processing in October 2006. There are people with qualifying priority dates who did not file before the EB2 India visa numbers became unavailable in August 2006. There likely are those who received approved labor certifications from the Backlog Processing Centers recently, as well, who may have priority dates before June 15, 2002. Of course, EB2 Indian nationals with I-485s pending and priority dates before June 15, 2002 will become eligible once again for approval of those cases, as of October. Thus, this is good news for some. There obviously are many people with priority dates after June 15, 2002 who will have to continue to wait, however.
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EB3 Skilled / Professional
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Limited forward movement occurred in EB3 for all areas of chargeability. All of the cutoff dates are still in the 2001 and 2002 range for nationals of all countries, however. The worldwide category, mainland China, and the Philippines, all moved by two months, to May 1, 2002. India inched forward by a few days, to April 22, 2001. Mexico moved forward to May 1, 2001.
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EB3 Schedule A
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Schedule A remains current. As announced previously, however, the DOS expects that the one-time allocation of 50,000 visa numbers will be almost fully depleted by the end of October 2006. Once these numbers have all been used, the Schedule A nurses and physical therapists will be included in the EB3 professional / skilled worker category and will face the same lengthy waiting times.
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EB3 Other Workers
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The EB3 "other workers" category has an available annual allocation of 5,000 numbers. This category became unavailable in May 2006. The other workers category will be available again, with a cutoff date of January 1, 2001 during the month of October 2006.
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Recommendations
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The DOS did not issue any predictions in the October 2006 Visa Bulletin. We continue to advise MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers to avoid delay and file their I-485 cases as soon as they become eligible. Even if a category is current, one cannot assume that it will remain so for the forthcoming months. The demand for visa numbers is expected to increase as the DOL increases case completions through the backlog centers.
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Those with multiple green card cases should explore the possibility of priority date retention, if they have approved I-140s and will be filing subsequent I-140 petitions. It is also our recommendation to those nationals of countries with high rates of immigration and cutoff date problems, that they seek cross-chargeability if they have spouses born in different countries. We at the Murthy Law Firm regularly monitor the Visa Bulletin to share updates with our readers.