January Visa Bulletin : Bad News for EB2 India
Posted Dec 21, 2007
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As MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers were advised in our December 11, 2007 NewsFlash, January 2008 Visa Bulletin: EB2 India Retrogression, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) Visa Bulletin was released for January 2008, and the news for EB2, India, is quite bad. The December Visa Bulletin brought significant retrogression in the EB2 category for both India and China. The January Visa Bulletin continues this trend for India, while EB2 China remains unchanged. There is slight forward movement in some EB3 chargeability areas. Categories that were previously current remain current. The latest Visa Bulletin chart is always available on MurthyDotCom.
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Summary of Visa Bulletin
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Employment-Based First Preference
This category remains current for all countries of chargeability.
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Employment-Based Second Preference
This category continues to be current for worldwide, Mexico, and the Philippines. The cutoff date for China remained unchanged, at January 1, 2003. This follows a three-year retrogression in December. The big news was India, which retrogressed by two full years, to January 1, 2000.
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Employment-Based Third Preference
The cutoff date for the EB3 worldwide category, China, and the Philippines each moved forward. The worldwide category moved forward by a month and a half, to October 15, 2002. China inched forward by half a month, to November 1, 2001; the Philippines moved by a month, to October 1, 2002. India remained unchanged, at May 1, 2001. Mexico remained at April 22, 2001. The "other workers" category continued to have an October 1, 2001 cutoff date for all areas of chargeability.
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Employment-Based Fourth / Fifth / Religious Workers and Targeted Employment
The EB4, EB5, religious workers, and the targeted employment categories are all current.
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Explanation and Prediction
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The reason for the EB2 India retrogression is high demand for visa numbers. The cutoff dates are set based upon the quantity of visa numbers remaining and the anticipated demand. The additional significant retrogression for January 2008 reflects a very small supply of visa numbers, as compared to pending EB2 I-485 cases and consular processing cases. Since the retrogression in December did not sufficiently limit the class of eligible cases, and the resulting demand for visa numbers, the dates moved backward once again.
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Worse yet, the Visa Bulletin contained the announcement that it is likely the annual EB2, India, limit will be met in the next few months. This would make the category completely unavailable until the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2008.