The February 2011 Visa Bulletin was released recently by the State Department. In general, there is not much positive movements in the cut off dates for both family and employment petitions. On the family side, the retrogression that started in January continues to be a problem. As discussed previously, the rapid forward advancements in family cut off dates during the past two years have caused a huge increase in demand for family immigrant visa numbers. As a result, the U.S. State Department must hold back visa usage by retrogressing the cut off dates. The pull back is particularly serious in the F2A and F4 categories. Some of our clients do not understand why their cases have changed from being "current" to being two years behind all of a sudden.
Specifically, F1 (unmarried sons and daughters of citizens) remain unchanged for most of the countries; F1 Philippines advances to 8/1/1994 by two months while F1 Mexico moves forward by two weeks to 01/22/1993. F2A (spouses and minor children of green card holders) and F2B (adult, unmarried sons and daughters of green card holders) remain unchanged for the most part except F2B Philippines, which advances two weeks to 06/01/1999. F4 (brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens) also suffers from major setback. F4 goes back two years to 01/01/2000 for most countries except Mexico (1/1/96) and Philippines (1/15/88).
On the employment side, most of the preference categories remain unchanged or advances only slightly. Once again, EB-2 China and India remain stagnant. Eb-3 Philippines tiptoes forward by one week to 04/01/2005 while EB-3 India advances three weeks to 02/22/2002. EB-1 remains current across the board. EB-3 India Other Worker also advances three weeks.
Please visit http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_5228.html to review the February 2011 Visa Bulletin.
6 comments:
The Family 4th preference category has retrogressed by 2 years. When can we expect that to turn back to the normal rate. My priority date is May 2002 and the current bulletin retrogressed to Jan 2000. When can I expect to get my final processing started?
The State Department has stated that continued heavy demand for visa numbers may result in further retrogression. The State Department also explained that, in a given month, "visa allotments are made only on the basis of the total applicants reported documentarily qualified each month, compared with the amount of available numbers". Many of these "documentarily qualified" applicants actually have earlier priority dates than the cut off dates of the month.
I too am in the same boat... Looking at the history of the cut-off dates, this retrogression should not last more than 3-4 months.
i had priority date of april2001 in f4 my ds230 &
all papers stand submitted &o.k.as per tele information &now this retrogression our medical & interview were left now how long to further wait for last step
my case was completed on april 4th for f4 but this damn retrogression means more waiting for an interview sigh:(
Priority date of August 2002. I was happy to see the advancements. But now its at March 2000 for India. I am sad.
Paul: I have a question. My mother's younger sister applied for F$ category. In that application my Mom is covered along with my Dad (obviously her spouse), her younger daughter (my sister who is 19 years old). I am 22 years old. Am I covered under F4 category. Once again, my mother's younger sister filed F4 petition for my mom, my dad & children.
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