The Department of State has released their April Visa Bulletin. In addition Mr. Oppenheim from the Department of State has also updated AILA about future visa movement. I will summarize both updates for you below.
April Visa Bulletin:
Family Based:
Final Action Dates: Most categories moved forward about 3-4 weeks.
Dates for Filing: No Movement
USCIS stated that they would use Dates for Filing for family based cases.
Employment Based:
Final Action Dates: Similar to family based cases, most moved forward about 1 month, perhaps a little more. Of note, EB-3 for China moved to August 15, 2015, about a 2 month jump.
Dates for Filing: No Movement
USCIS state that they would use Final Action Dates for employment Based Cases.
Update from Charlie Oppenheim
Charlie Oppenheim (for those who do not know, he is the person at the Department of State in charge of immigrant visa numbers and the visa bulletin) did not have a lot of guidance to offer this time. The problem is that he has such limited visibility into the actual number of cases at USCIS that he is basically going on his intuition (i.e. looking at past movements and making educated guesses). For example, when he announced the final action dates for February (in mid-January), USCIS stated that they had 400 Indian EB-2 cases ready to adjudicate and to request immigrant visa numbers for. In reality, by the end of February, USCIS had requested over 700 immigration visas in this category for India. This coupled with the fact that Mr. Oppenheim needs to make sure that he uses up as many immigrant visas by the end of the fiscal year as possible, leads to rapid movement in some categories (such as EB-3 worldwide numbers).
Mr. Oppenheim stated that EB-2 advancement for India will slow because of the increased demand. He also stated that EB-3 China numbers will advance slowly because of the fall down of numbers from EB-2 China (which is more backlogged now).
Lastly, EB-1 usage is such that there may be very few that can fall down to EB-2 India to help with that backlog. He will update us more regarding EB-1 usage in the coming months.
Please remember, as always, this blog does not offer legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult with a lawyer instead of a blog. Thank you.
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