January 2012 I-485 Pending Inventory - EB Category Visa Use

USCIS released I-485 pending inventory upto 12 January 2012. Please note this inventory is only for Service Centers and Field Offices, and does not contain consular processing cases. Dependents are included. Here is a summary of the I-485 inventory when compared to October 2011 Inventory. This inventory is used to estimate the visa use during Q1 of FY 2012 and Projected Demand for FY 2012.Please note that one fallacy to using inventory to estimate demand is that it will not consider cases approved in less than 90 days.

EB1 demand : In general, EB1 is highly backlogged with atleast 15,583 applications still pending at Service Centers. Although this number looks big at first glance please do not worry. This is just a backlog that USCIS will need to clear going forward. Rate of new application filings is very low and we can estimate at least 12,000 or more spillover from this category at current rate. This may change with time. It all depends how much USCIS will like to reduce it's inventory when crossing into FY 2013. Generally such number is around 8,000 year-to-year, and we have used this number to estimate our projected EB1 demand for FY 2012.

EB2-ROW-M-P demand - This category demand is little surprising at first. I am not sure if new demand is so low but we should remember that other significant demand for this category also comes from consular processed cases. Such demand is usually around 15%. Estimated Demand shown is only for USCIS and Field Offices. Usually year to year inventory for this category ends around 8,000 -10,000. We assumed 8,000 in our calculations.

If we will add 15% to the estimated demand, we can say that estimated FY 2012 EB2-ROW-M-P demand is around 1.15 * 22,379 = 25,735. From EB2-ROW-M-P, we can expect spillover around 34,200 - 25,735 = 8,465 or more

EB3-ROW-M-P demand - Visa use for for EB3-ROW-M-P is estimated from October 2011 to January 2012 inventory. Please see below.

 One thing to note here is that only 5,042 visa numbers were used by EB3-ROW-M-P at USCIS. Total visa number available for 3 months is around 8,682. Remaining 3,640 were used by consulates abroad. This demand is around 40% for CP cases.We are still marching towards 08 August 2006 for this category.

EB2-IC demand - This section of the article will only cover EB2-India and China demand till PD July 31st, 2007. This demand is all inclusive of visa numbers that are/will be used upto this PD for current fiscal year (FY 2012). Demand from October 2011-January 2012 inventory estimates visa number used until Q1, cases still waiting for visa numbers and new EB3 to EB2 porting cases. Remaining demand after PD July 2007 is covered in "Predictions for EB2-India & China FY 2012".

Just based on inventory it seems that only 7,795 visa numbers were used in Q1-FY 2012. Total PWMB numbers are also very less compared to what we initially thought. PWMBs includes all PDs from May 2006- July 2007 (June VB-November VB) that are still pending since October 2011 inventory. Visa use for such cases will come from this year's quota. These 14,430 demand will be limiting factor for current year cut-off date on retrogression. Retrogression will be estimated is next article.

EB3- India - Inventory for EB3-India compared to last fiscal year reduced by 4884 (2803 annual limit + 2081 estimated porting and/or case abandonment upto January 2003). Minimum movement around 08 November 2002 is expected. Movement can be little more if more folks from November-December 2002 will port for this year.

EB4- demand - Last year, EB4 demand was high or at par, and hence no spillover was received from this category. For this year also we may assume that no spillover will be received.

EB5- demand - EB5 demand is similar level as last year and may yield around 3000-4000 unused visa numbers if similar demand is seen in FY 2012.

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