The US State Department just released the visa bulletin for July and there is little to report in terms of the employment based visas for India. China however, under the EB-2 and EB-3 has seen advancements by a big stroke, i.e. ranging from one and half to three and a half months currently.

This can’t be said about Indian applicants unfortunately. They have nothing significant to look forward to. Both EB-1 and EB-3 have not moved at all while EB-2 has moved forward by five days from April 19 to April 24, 2019. This is the only change to report in terms of our last analysis of the visa bulletin wherein the verdict was to downgrade to EB-3 since that was moving faster than EB-2.

The big news is for the Family-based Second Preference (FB-2A) category that is current after a two-year backlog! This implies that the FB-2A applicants currently in the US on a valid visa can file for I-485 Adjustment of Status right away. They are advised to react immediately since these ‘current’ dates may change in September and these applicants may lose this window of opportunity in the future. For applicants outside if the US, they can expect their petition to be sent to NVC. So, all green card holders in the US should sponsor their spouse and children for lawful permanent residency.

If you have more questions, walk through the family based green card FAQs for answers.

Another reason this is a significant time frame for the FB-2A category is that even immigrants who have filed Form I-130 and I-485 concurrently may now file for new FB-2A.

Other family-based categories remain unchanged much.

For more details on July’s Visa Bulletin compare the trends in the final action and dates for filing applications with previous bulletins.