January 2009 Visa Bulletin – Slow Movement Forward

The January 2009 Visa Bulletin is out. As expected and unfortunately, the forward movement in the employment-based category is very small.

EB-2 India has moved a month forward from June 2001 to July 2001. EB-2 China has moved from June 2004 to July 2004.

EB-3 India has moved by only 15 days - from October 1, 2001 to October 15, 2001. EB-3 ROW (Rest of the World) remains unchanged at May 1, 2005.

We have discussed previously that according to the State Department (which is responsible for issuing the Visa Bulletin), the high demand being received from USCIS for employment-based immigrant visas indicates that they have a significant amount of cases with priority dates that are earlier than the established cut-offs. This is likely to result in slow forward movement of the cut-off dates for most employment-based categories during the next few months.