The Department of State (DOS) Visa Bulletin for April 2009 announces significant retrogression for EB3 Worldwide, Mexico, and the Philippines.  For Worldwide, the EB3 category will move backwards more than two years to March 1, 2003.  Mexico and the Philippines will also move backwards to March 1, 2003.  For EB3 India, the priority date will move forward 15 days to November 1, 2001.  China will move forward about four months March 1, 2003.

DOS explains the need for retrogression in EB3 Worldwide, Mexico, and the Philippines: 

Despite the established cut-off date having been held for the past five months in an effort to keep demand within the average monthly usage targets, the amount of demand being received from Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Offices for adjustment of status cases remains extremely high.  Therefore, it has been necessary to retrogress the April cut-off dates in an attempt to hold demand within the FY-2009 annual limit.  Since over 60 percent of the Worldwide and Philippines Employment Third preference CIS demand received this year has been for applicants with priority dates prior to January 1, 2004, the cut-off date has been retrogressed to 01MAR03 to help ensure that the amount of future demand is significantly reduced.  

In the employment-based second preference category (EB2), all countries other than India and China remain current.  EB2 India and China will not move this month.  EB2 India will remain at February 15, 2004 and EB2 China at February 15, 2005.  Employment-based first preference (EB1) remains current for all countries.

It is important to note that "nationality" is not the same as citizenship.  Generally, DOS looks at the country of birth in determining whether a person is a national of a given country.  As a result, persons who become citizens of other countries (i.e., Indians who become Canadian citizens) are still considered nationals of their birth country for immigrant visa purposes.

For general information on visa retrogression, please see our FAQ on this subject.  For more information on the Visa Bulletin and country quota movements, including information about movement in the Family-Based Quotas, please see our DOS Visa Bulletin and Quota Movement page which includes detailed nationality-specific charts of quota movement for the past decade.

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