The Department of State (DOS) Visa Bulletin for July 2009 indicates a significant retrogression in employment-based second preference (EB2) for China-born individuals - back to January 1, 2000. This follows last month's retrogression in the EB2 category for India-born individuals to the same date. All countries other than India and China remain current in the EB2 category. Employment-based first preference (EB1) remains current for all countries as well.

The EB3 category will remain "unavailable" until October 2009 when the new fiscal year begins. DOS has indicated that demand from USCIS for adjustment of status cases with priority dates that were significantly earlier than the established cut-off dates resulted in the annual limits being reached during the current fiscal year.

In addition to the release of the July Visa Bulletin, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced today that it has been provided with predictions of severe visa retrogressions from the DOS. DOS states that the demand in several categories (i.e., EB4 and EB5) has been unusually high and this will result in the visa numbers for the other categories to suffer as a consequence. This is due to the fact that unused visa numbers in the EB4 (religious worker) and EB5 (immigrant investor) categories normally are transferred to the EB1 and EB2 categories - heavier usage of EB4 and EB5 means fewer numbers available for EB1 and EB2. DOS predicts that we may see retrogression in the EB1 category for China-born and India-born individuals before October 2009. DOS further predicts that the EB2 category for China-born and India-born individuals is likely to become unavailable by October 2009. Without legislative relief, these categories could retrogress even further.

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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