August 2009 Visa Bulletin : EB2 China / India Jumps to 01 Oct 2003
Posted Jul 17, 2009

The August 2009 U.S. Department of State (DOS) Visa Bulletin brought a bit of good news for some EB2 applicants. The cutoff date for India and China moved forward to October 1, 2003. For both countries, the cutoff date in this category had recently retrogressed to January 1, 2000. No explanation was provided for the change to October 1, 2003. Since the end of the fiscal year is approaching, however, it is likely that there are some unexpected "extra" immigrant visa numbers from different categories that can be shifted to EB2  for India and China. [The most recent DOS Visa Bulletin chart can always be found on MurthyDotCom.]
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Visa Bulletin Summary for August 2009
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Employment-Based, First Preference (EB1)
This category is current for all countries of chargeability.
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Employment-Based, Second Preference (EB2)
This category is current for all countries, except India and China. The cutoff date for both India and China moved forward by more than three years, to October 1, 2003.
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Employment-Based, Third Preference (EB3)
The EB3 category remains completely unavailable for all countries, as all numbers have been used for the current fiscal year.
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Employment-Based, Fourth (EB4) and Fifth Preference (EB5)
These categories and subcategories are current for all countries of chargeability. However, the Visa Bulletin indicates that there is heavy demand in the EB4 category. Thus, it may become necessary to establish a cutoff date in September 2009. It is also possible that this category could become "unavailable" during the month of September 2009.
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Explanation and Conclusion
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As mentioned, the DOS Visa Bulletin did not include an explanation of the change in EB2 for India and China. Shifts of this nature toward the end of the fiscal year, however, normally indicate an availability of immigrant visa numbers in other categories that could be shifted where they are needed; in this case to India and China. This is permissible under certain rules that allow visa numbers to move between categories and countries of chargeability to avoid wasting the visa numbers towards the end of a fiscal year, as they do not roll over to the next fiscal year.
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This is good news to some EB2 applicants from India and China. It should be noted, though, that it does not indicate that there really are enough immigrant visa numbers for all EB2 India and China cases with priority dates prior to October 1, 2003. It simply means that the best estimates indicate that the cutoff date had to move to that date in order to allow the approval of enough cases to use all the visa numbers by the end of the USCIS fiscal year, which is September 30, 2009. MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers receive an explanation and analysis of pertinent information in the DOS Visa Bulletin each month.