Visa Bulletin - December 2011

December 2011 Visa Bulletin  for the FY 2012 was released today. December visa bulletin brought 4.5 month movement for the EB-2 China and EB-2 India categories., thus moving it to the most favorable cur-off dates  ever.  EB3 categories advanced as expected with EB3-ROW-M-P moving by 3 weeks. EB3-India and China moved as expected. All other categories are current as expected. Family Based category  saw some movement.

Employment-Based (EB)
Below is a summary of the December 2011 Visa Bulletin with respect to employment-based petitions:

• EB-1 remains current across the board.
• EB-2 remains current for EB-2 ROW, Mexico and Philippines.   EB-2 India and EB-2 China both move forward by four and a half (4.5) months to March 15, 2008.
• EB-3 ROW, EB-3 Mexico and EB-3 Philippines move forward by only three (3) weeks to January 15, 2006, EB-3 China  moves forward by two (2) weeks to September 8, 2004, while EB-3 India  moves forward by only one (1) week to August 1, 2002.
• The “other worker” category remains unchanged (again) at  April 22, 2003 for China.  It moves forward by one and a half (1.5) months for ROW, Mexico and Philippines to January 1, 2006.  It also moves forward by five  (5) weeks for India to July 22, 2002.

Family-Based (FB)

Below is a summary of the December 2011 Visa Bulletin with respect to family-based petitions:

• FB1 moves forward (again, for third consecutive month).  FB1 ROW, China and India all move forward by five (5) weeks to September 1, 2004.   FB1 Mexico moves forward by one (1) week to April 8, 1993 and FB1 Philippines moves forward by three (3) weeks to March 1, 1997.
• FB2A moves forward by five (5) weeks to March 22, 2009 for ROW, China, India, and Philippines.  FB2A Mexico moves forward by two (2) months to February 8, 2009.
• FB2B ROW, China and India move forward by two (2) weeks to August 15, 2003.  FB2B Mexico remains unchanged at November 22, 1992.  FB2B Philippines moves forward by one (1) month to August 15, 2001.

VISA AVAILABILITY IN THE COMING MONTHS

 

FB Categories
No Notes

EB Categories

No Notes

Demand Data Comparison for December & November 2011 Visa Bulletin Movement

EB3-ROW-M-P Future Movement 

EB3-ROW-M-P moved to cut-off date of 15 January 2006 as expected based on current demand and available visas used on monthly basis. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but there is always some hidden demand and other regularly old PD cases  that continuously become documentarily qualified, thus receiving visas from the monthly allocation. Some of these cases are old  and are captured in I-485 pending inventory. On average 1500-1600 demand is generally reduced on a monthly basis from the available inventory. With the released I-485 pending inventory and recently released demand data, it is becoming more and more obvious that cut-off dates for FY 2012 for this category may not cross 01 August 2006. We will keep an eye on the demand data but anything more than this is less plausible so far.

 

EB3-India & China Future Movement 

EB3-India will continue to move 1 week in each visa bulletin. There could be some substantial movement later in the year but so far this will be the trend. EB3-China is difficult to predict due to high consular processing demand but we expect it to move and cross into PD 2005 for this fiscal year.

EB2-India & China Movement 

Dates for EB2-IC has crossed into cut-off date of March 2008. It is impressive to see that Mr. Oppenheim is taking different approach this year and we should applaud him for his efforts. Since Mr. Oppenheim is taking different course for FY 2012, we believe that we should also keep our dogmatic approach to number crunching away for sometime until it make sense to do so. We should try to speculate what can happen in next few bulletins and successive months from their until summer 2012. We may be 'out to lunch' with this approach but can very well veer back to number crunching if this does not make sense in next few bulletins. 

We believe retrogression is imminent in summer 2012; only exception will be HR 3012  if it will become a law by that time. We know that current movement upto March 2008 from 15 April 2007(Sep VB date) would easily bring demand that could end up using around 28K-30K visas from 140,000 available EB category visas. These are definitely in par with what we would usually see year-to-year with EB2-IC spillover + 5600 annual limits.

Question is so what can we expect from Mr. Oppenheim hereon? Firstly, we can say he has no clue that what real demand is due to such movement and lets presume he might not get hold off this until next two months ( that too only if he decides to persuade USCIS to tell him the numbers based on receipts issued).In reality, he may have to wait for real count on demand until April-May 2012 when such cases will start to become documentarily qualified and USCIS will start requesting for visa numbers. 

That said, Mr. Oppenheim may not still be done with intaking more applications for this fiscal year. First, based on past year trend on visa use, monthly demand and estimations, EB2-IC had always moved around 11 months each year. By moving dates upto March 2008, he had just covered those bases. But still he does not know what would happen with HR 3012, whether it will pass with effective date of 01 September 2011. We know from our estimation on this bill, that cut-off dates until PD June 2008 would easily be current if this bill is passed. With approximation on fall-outs due to unforeseen reason, we can expect PD July-August 2008 to be current. If Mr. Oppenheim will stop such movement from next visa bulletin, he may miss that window on keeping cases ready for adjudication in case HR 3012 will become a law as he mentioned in previous bulletin that it can take 4-6 months to get these cases adjudicated. As I mentioned ,this is a speculation and I may  be out to lunch but we believe in coming bulletin(s), EB2-IC dates may move all the way from June 2008-August 2008.  Once, DOS will have enough applications in hand, it will be pretty straight forward for DOS to retrogress EB2-IC or EB2-ROW in summer 2012, whatever is appropriate based on fate of the bill.

Now who can expect Green Card for FY 2012? and how will dates retrogress? One thing  to keep in mind with USCIS is that they will approve cases randomly usually based on month of filings, regardless of Priority Date. Now since most of the July 2007 backlog is cleared, I believe in 4 to 6 months when such cases will start becoming documentarily qualified, we will start to see approvals. Usually in such case, application filed at NSC will have upper hand compared to TSC filings due to vast difference in processing times. Generally during these months of the year, TSC will only approve 6000-8000 cases and NSC will approve around 10,000 cases consistently. So please do not be surprised if NSC case that become current in December bulletin will see approval before November bulletin cases. This is very common with USCIS. Approvals will be random. File your cases as perfect as possible so that you do not receive RFEs. In general, FY 2012 for EB2-IC will be exceptional with respect to approvals, with dates all over from August 2007 PD to March 2008 PD getting randomly approved. Once DOS will feel that enough visa numbers are used for EB2-IC based on EB1 and EB2-ROW demand, at that time dates may retrogress upto PD 01 Sep 07- 01 Nov 07. This is when we will start to see some huge numbers in demand data and we can go back to our number crunching and predictions based on calculations. For some time we believe VB movement and approvals at USCIS will be random.