Visa Bulletin

What It Means

The Visa Bulletin is published monthly by the Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs and serves as the operational rationing tool for the U.S. immigrant visa system. It implements the numerical caps in INA sections 201, 202, and 203: 480,000 family-sponsored visas, 140,000 employment-based visas, 55,000 diversity visas, and the 7% per-country cap that prevents any single country from receiving more than 7% of total family- and employment-based visas in a fiscal year. The bulletin publishes two charts each month. "Final Action Dates" (Chart A) list the priority dates for which visas are actually being issued that month. "Dates for Filing" (Chart B) list the earliest priority dates at which applicants may submit I-485 applications, which USCIS may or may not honor in any given month. Applicants from oversubscribed countries experience retrogression, where priority dates move backward month to month. EB-2 India and EB-3 India final action dates have at times been stuck in 2012 or earlier, implying effective wait times of 15 to 80-plus years for some beneficiaries based on Cato Institute and USCIS backlog analyses. Family-based category F2A (spouses and minor children of LPRs) is the only family preference with country limits that is frequently current, while F4 (siblings of U.S. citizens) from the Philippines and Mexico runs more than 20 years behind. On visatracker.org, visa bulletin movement directly affects how backlog trend (30% of the Pipeline Score) is calculated for each field office.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Terms