Earlier this week, the DOS released the August Visa Bulletin. Once again, it showed steady but slow movement forward. They also released their determinations regarding overall preference and per-country allocations setting the worldwide family limit at 226,000, the world-wide employment limit at 140,000 and the per country limit at 25,620.
The DOS released the July Visa bulletin today and it contained good news for India and PRC EB2 holders as the dates jumped forward almost 5 months, to March 8,2007. Other categories and countries of chargeability were not as lucky as dates continue to move forward but, at a snail-like pace.
The DOS has released the June visa bulletin and India EB2 jumped ahead by almost 4 months. Other categories continued to move at a snail-like pace.
The Department of State released the May visa bulletin and as promised, there was some forward movement in all categories including India EB2. Also included in the bulletin were predictions of future movement and an interesting (if you are an immigration attorney, an Indian national in the EB2 category or simply crazy about numbers) explanation on how the unused numbers from EB1 will trickle down to EB2, etc.
The Department of State has advised AILA that due to a lack of demand for the EB1 category, there will be a trickle down effect that will positively impact the Indian EB2 category and move dates forward. They estimate that an additonal 12,000 visas will be available to the Indian EB2 category. This is great news as this category has not moved since Sept of 2010 and the prior prediction from the DOS was that no movement should be expected in FY 2011. We expect to see this forward movement as early as the May Visa bulletin which will be released in mid April. This good news should not derail efforts for long-term legislative relief and reasonable wait times for all employment based categories.