August 2019 Visa Bulletin Released - Backlogs All Around

Just yesterday the Department of State released the Visa Bulletin for August 2019 and there are backlogs all around for Employment Based Green Cards – updates for all categories below:

EB-1A:  This has been backlogged for quite a while, but is retrogressing a couple years this month to July 1, 2016 for everyone except India, which is retrogressed to July 1, 2015.

EB-2:  This has been current for most of the world but will be retrogressed to January 1, 2017 for everyone except India, which retrogressed to May 2, 2009 for India.  However, on the bright side, the Dates for Filing for the EB-2 are current (except for China and India) which shows that this is a short term backlog and should come back to current on October 1 of this year.

EB-3:  This category was also current for everyone prior to this month (except China and India) but has retrogressed to July 1, 2016 for everyone except India, which is at January 1, 2006.  As with the EB-2 though, the Dates for Filing are current (again except for China and India) indicating this is just temporary and will go back to current on October 1, 2019.

Conclusion

The above retrogressions are due to high demand in all employment categories.  Hopefully, the high demand is due to USCIS working through its backlogs, which means certain timelines, at least, may start coming down (timelines on the adjudication of applications, not the visa bulletin backlogs).  It also means that the demand will not be sustained which would mean that there is a much higher likelihood that the dates will return to where they were prior to this new visa bulletin.  It should noted that, while we feel (and Mr. Charlie Oppenheim also feels) that the dates will return to the dates that they had in the July Visa Bulletin (which was current for EB-2 and EB-3 for all areas except India and China), this is not a guarantee.