August 2015 Visa Bulletin and Guidance from DOS on future Movement

Last week the August 2015 visa bulletin came out.   While there were not many major changes, there are some worth noting.

First, in terms of family based numbers, most categories moved forward about 1 month for All Other Countries.  Numbers for Mexico, China, India and the Philippines either stayed at the same date or move forward slightly.  The person at the DOS in charge of Visa Numbers, Charles Oppenheim, did issue guidance saying that the F2A category – Spouses of Permanent Residents, which has been moving forward fairly steadily, would continue to do so for the foreseeable future because of lack of demand.

Moving to employment based, there is more to report:

EB-2:  Most of the world is current for EB-2 except India and China.  India remained in 2008, but China continues its forward movement to December 15, 2013, a jump of 2.5 months.  Mr. Oppenheim says that China will most likely move forward again in September (or, at the worst, hold steady).  India will not move forward.

EB-3:  This category saw the biggest changes.  Worldwide numbers moved forward to July 15, 2015, a jump of 3 months.  Mr. Oppenheim projects that this number will move forward again in September, but he may hold it steady in October and November just to see if additional demand appears.  For China, EB-2 when from 2011 back to 2004, a retrogression of 7 years. According to Mr. Oppenheim, this is because unused family numbers for China that he had been predicting would fall down to the EB-2 category are not materializing (i.e. more family based visas are being used than he thought).  Therefore he had to backlog China.  However he does feel that forward movement (and moving China back to 2011) will happen in October.

Any question?  Please feel free to contact me.  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.