News Update - January 9, 2010
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
February 2010 Visa Chart Shows Positive Movement in Most Categories
The visa chart for February 2010 shows promising movement in all categories except F-3 (U.S. citizen applying for married son or daughter), and EW-3 (unskilled worker for position requiring less than two years experience). Both F-3 and EW-3 showed no movement at all. F-3 immigrant visas remained available only for those who filed petitions before 5/22/01 from most of the world and EW-3 immigrant visas for those filing labor certification applications before 6/1/01. Otherwise hefty jumps were seen in F-11 (U.S. citizen petitioning for unmarried son or daughter over the age of 21) from 4/1/04 to 6/1/04; F-2A (lawful permanent resident petitioning for spouse and unmarried child under the age of 21) from 1/1/06 to 3/1/06; F-2B (lawful permanent resident petitioning for unmarried son or daughter over the age of 21) from 12/1/01 to 1/1/02; and F-4 (U.S. citizen petitioning for sibling) from 10/1/99 to11/15/99; EB-1 (extraordinary alien, outstanding professor or researcher, or intracompany transferee) remained current; EB-2 (advanced degree or national interest waiver applicant) remained current for most of the world with China moving from 5/1/05 to 5/22/05 although India remained without movement at 1/22/05; EB-3 (applicant in position requiring a bachelor's degree or 2 years of experience) moved from 8/1/02 to 9/22/02 although India remained at 6/22/01; and the EB-4 and EB-5 categories for religious individuals and investors respectively remained current.
There were no new projections for cut off dates of immigrant visa categories in the future. The advice given in January's visa bulletin was that by September 30, 2010, the EB-2 category for China would be somewhere between July through October 2005 and India February through early March 2005 -- although if the per country limits were lifted through inability of other countries to exhaust the employment based quotas, visa availability for China and India would run from October through December 2005. For EB-3, the Department of State projected the cut off date by September 30, 2010 for most countries to run from April through August 2005, with China from June through September 2003, and India from January through February 2002. The Department of course gave the caution that the date ranges were only estimates which were subject to fluctuations in demand during the coming months.
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