Employment-Based Visa Availability for

India and China "Grim"

The State Department is signaling that demand for employment-based visas will continue to be strong and such that cut off dates may be pushed back in some categories and that others will remain unavailable. In a dramatic reminder of visa scarcity, State moved back by five years the cutoff date for India and China EB-2 visas (which require an advanced degree or a bachelors degree and at least five years of experience), which is now current for applicants who are beneficiaries of labor certifications of petitions filed earlier than January  1, 2000. By August or September 2009 State indicated that it may make the category for unavailable for these two countries. Federal law requires that nationals of any one country may not represent more than 7% of the recipients of the annual allotment of visas in a category, which equates to no more than 2,800 EB-2 visas. There are currently 25,000 EB-2 beneficiaries chargeable to India awaiting visa availability.

State has already exhausted its 2009 supply of EB-3 visas, which is available to professionals and skilled and unskilled workers. When the FY 2010 visas are made available, State expects the cutoff date to be March 2003. Cut off had been at May 2005 as recently as March of this year.

Part of the problem is increased demand in the EB-4 (religious workers) and EB-5 (Investors) such that they no longer can be relied upon to supply unused visas from those categories to satisfy EB-2 and EB-3 demand, effectively reducing the annual allotment to those high demand categories.

On the bright side, State expects the EB-1 category (Extraordinary Ability, Outstanding Researchers, and Multinational Executives) to remain current through the remainder or the year.

State publishes notice of visa availability in its monthly Visa Bulletin.

Back to Top

<<Return