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Each month, the Visa Office at the Department of State
subdivides the annual preference and foreign state limitations
specified by the INA into monthly allotments based on totals of
documentarily qualified immigrant visa applicants reported at
consular posts and CIS Offices, grouped by foreign state
chargeability, preference category, and priority date. If there are
sufficient numbers in a particular category to satisfy all reported
documentarily qualified demand, the category is considered
"Current." Whenever the total of documentarily
qualified applicants in a category exceeds the supply of numbers
available for allotment for the particular month, the category is
considered to be "oversubscribed" and a visa availability
cut-off date is established. The cut-off date is the priority
date of the first documentarily qualified applicant who could not
be accommodated for a visa number.
The chart below shows the estimated total number of
visas available for each employment preference category and country
for fiscal year 2012.
*The provisions of the Chinese Student Protection Act require
that the China annual limit be reduced by 1,000. A total of
300 numbers are deducted from the E3 category, and 700 from the E5
category.
**The EW category is currently entitled to no more than 5,000 of
this total.
Note that unused numbers can "fall-down" from E1 to E2
to E3. Unused numbers can "fall-up" from E4 and E5
to E1. This is taken into consideration when setting monthly/annual
targets for number use based on historical/recent patterns.
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On March 8, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a revised Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, bearing an edition date of March 8, 2013, for immediate use by employers.
EB-2 category for all chargeable areas other than China and India remains current, with some considerable forward movement but continued backlog in the EB-3 category.
A bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators has introduced the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, an 844-page bill that aims to bolster border security and seeks to provide some of the nation's 11 million undocumented people with a path to citizenship.
The White House Immigration Action Newsletter - March 2013 (Video Content)
