January 2010 Visa Bulletin: Employment Visas Remain Sluggish

The State Department publishes the Visa Bulletin every month to advise the public the availability of immigrant visa numbers in each preference category. The first table is for family-based immigration and the second for employment-based. If the priority date printed on the receipt of your petition is before the cut-off date in your category, then you're eligible for an immigrant visa. "C" means there are visas for all applicants, and "U" means visas are unavailable. Family All Charge- ability Areas Except Those Listed CHINA-mainland born INDIA MEXICO PHILIPP-INES 1st 01APR04 01APR04 01APR04 15AUG92 01DEC93 2A 01JAN06 01JAN06 01JAN06 01JAN04 01JAN06 2B 01DEC01 01DEC01 01DEC01 08JUN92 01JUL98 3rd 22MAY01 22MAY01 22MAY01 15SEP92 01DEC91 4th 01OCT99 01OCT99 01OCT99 22NOV95 01MAY87 1st: Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Citizens (about 23,000 per year). 2A: The 2 "A" preference is for Spouses and Children (under 21 & unmarried) of LPR's. 2B: The 2 "B" Preference is for Unmarried Sons and Daughters (21 or older) of LPR's. 3rd: Married Sons and Daughters of Citizens.(about 23,000 per year) 4th: Brothers and Sisters of Adult Citizens.(about 65,000 per year) Employment- Based Other Countries CHINA-mainland born INDIA MEXICO PHILIPPINES 1st C C C C C 2nd C 01MAY05 22JAN05 C C 3rd 01AUG02 01AUG02 22JUN01 01JUL02 01AUG02 Other Workers 01JUN01 01JUN01 01JUN01 01JUN01 01JUN01 4th C C C C C Religious Workers C C C C C 5th C C C C C 1st: Priority Workers (Extraordinary ability aliens, multinational companies executives/managers, outstanding prof./researchers) 2nd: Members of the Professions Holding Advanced Degrees or Persons of Exceptional Ability. 3rd: Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Other Workers (Unskilled.) 4th: "Special Immigrants" (Religious & others) 5th: Employment Creation (Investors) For the family petitions, many preference categories have advanced quite nicely from one to several months. On the employment side, there are also some forward movements with the visa numbers in the Second and Third preferences. In general, though, the employment picture remains unfavorable. Regular readers of this column would understand the number of employment cases currently pending is considerably greater than the annual number of visas allocated by law for employment cases. As a result, visa availability continues to be a major issue. The State Department also addresses this question in this bulletin: "Many of the [employment] categories were 'unavailable' at the end of FY-2009, which resulted in excessive demand being received during October and November. Coupled with the fact that CIS Offices have been doing an excellent job of processing cases, this has had an impact on cut-off date movements. Some forward movement has begun for January as we enter the second quarter of the fiscal year." The good news from State Department is that the Employment First preferences will likely continue to be current. Other than China and India, the Second preferences for other countries will likely to remain current too. For China and India, however, it is possible that they will change to become "unavailable" due to heavy demand for immigrant visas. This will happen if the per-country limit is reached. The January bulletin also states that Section 202(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) will come into play if there are unused visa numbers in a particular employment preference category in a calendar quarter. In this case, "the unused numbers may be made available without regard to the annual per-country limits." The State Department used the Second preference as an example. If there are visa numbers left in that preference, the unused visas would be used by China and India – two oversubscribed countries regardless of the per-country cap. If that happens, the same cut-off date would be applied to each country. According to the State Department, it will monitor visa usage closely to ensure that all available Employment visa numbers will be used properly. PROJECTIONS FOR EMPLOYMENT PREFERENCES IN FY-2010 The State Department also made some projections on the cut-off dates for the rest of FY-2010 (ending September 30) based on demand: Employment Second: China: July through October 2005; India: February through early March 2005. If Section 202(a)(5)were to apply; China and India: October through December 2005 Employment Third: Worldwide: April through August 2005; China: June through September 2003; India: January through February 2002; Mexico: January through June 2004; Philippines: April through August 2005