October 2007 Visa Bulletin
Posted Sep 14, 2007
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After much speculation as to its possible content, the October 2007 Visa Bulletin has been released. It had been suggested by the U.S. Department of State that this bulletin would resemble the February 2007 Visa Bulletin. To some degree, this prediction was accurate, in that EB3 is quite retrogressed across all countries of chargeability and EB2 has cutoff dates for India and China, only. The October Visa Bulletin reflects the start of a new fiscal year (FY2008), with a new allocation of visa numbers. As always, the most recent visa bulletin chart can be found on MurthyDotCom.
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Summary of Visa Bulletin
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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 worldwide, Mexico and the Philippines. China's cutoff date is January 1, 2006; while India's cutoff date is April 1, 2004. These cutoff dates for India and China remain the same as they were in the September 2007 Visa Bulletin.
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Employment Based Third Preference (EB3)
This category has cutoff dates of August 1, 2002 under the worldwide category and for the Philippines. India and Mexico have cutoff dates of April 22, 2001. China's cutoff date is September 1, 2001. The "other worker" category has an October 1, 2001 cutoff date for all areas of chargeability.
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Employment Based Fourth (EB4) / EB5 / Religious Workers and Targeted Employment
These categories are all current.
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Conclusion
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The October 2007 Visa Bulletin did not contain any predictions of cutoff date movement in the EB categories for the future. It is possible that the DOS is waiting for the USCIS to complete its I-485 receipting process to gauge the number of I-485s filed during July and August 2007 and will then determine future cutoff dates based on the number of cases filed, their priority dates, nationals filing these I-485s, employment-based categories, and other factors. MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers will be informed of any news regarding the movement of priority dates.