With the government fiscal year nearing an end, Charles (“Charlie”) Oppenheim from the Department of State recently shared trends and projections for the various immigrant preference categories. Please refer to our previous blogs on this topic for an overview of how the monthly Visa Bulletin works.
Family-Based Projections: Charlie predicted that, in September, most of the family-based categories would hold or retrogress from where they are in August. This largely did not eventuate, with a number of categories making some progress in September.
Employment-Based Projections: Charlie predicted that there would be no forward movement for EB-2 and EB-3 China this fiscal year and the September Visa Bulletin confirms that, with both categories anchored at a final action date of January 1, 2010. Charlie also predicted that EB-3 India would advance modestly and EB-2 India would continue to track one week ahead of the EB-3 India in September. The September Visa Bulletin reveals that EB-3 India will advance a little to a final action date of February 15, 2005 while EB-2 India will progress to February 22, 2005, as predicted.
Charlie also noted that EB-3 Worldwide has been close to being “current” for some time, and he expects status quo to remain at least October. For September, EB-3 Worldwide progressed to a final action date of May 1, 2016. For EB-2 Worldwide, Charlie’s prediction that the final action date would hold at February 1, 2014 in September has proven to be correct.
In terms of future predictions, there is some good news in that Charlie expects the EB-2 Worldwide category to fully recover to “current” in October. Although he predicts the EB-2 India and EB-2 China cut-off dates will continue to advance in October, he expects they will not fully recover yet, although is hopeful that EB-2 China could recover as early as November. He also expects that EB-1 China and EB-1 India, which are retrogressed to January 1, 2010 in August and will remain that way in September, will become current again in October or November at the latest.
We will continue to monitor preference category movements and trends as they arise and advise current clients of any impact on their immigration matters.