August Visa Bulletin

With the release of the August Visa Bulletin, the Department of State (DOS) forced everyone not born in India, China or the Philippines to learn the term retrogression as the final action dates for all categories for all countries retrogressed to dates ranging from Jan 2006 to Jan 2017. This "end of the year" phenomenon is created by the usage by the USCIS (I-485 cases) and the Consular posts (CP cases) of the allotted number of immigrant visas for a fiscal year. In other words, approvals of green cards exhausts the allotment thereby creating retrogression; so in effect, this is a good thing. Many years ago, all allotted immigrant visas were not utilized thereby wasting them as there is no carry-over so even though this recent retrogression may appear to be a bad thing, it is better than the alternative. The DOS expects priority dates to return to July 2019 dates when the new fiscal year starts on October 1, 2019.