September’s visa bulletin is a testimony to the fact that India and China are usually the ones to get most impacted from any move made by the State Department. This is reflective of how these two countries supply the largest specialty occupation work force to the US. And the latest visa bulletin for September shows that the employment based visa categories are the worst hit this time.

While Indian applicants were definitely impacted, it was the applicants from China who got most affected across all employment based categories. While most other countries have either advanced or maintained their August visa bulletin cutoff dates including for the EB-5 category, both India and China will retrogress in September unfortunately.

September Visa Bulletin Analysis

The main highlights of the September Visa Bulletin are –

• Firstly, according to the State Department although these dates are meant for the month of September, they are to roll out with immediate effect for EB-1 China and EB-3 China and India.
• Secondly, we are to anticipate additional retrogression until October and applicants should plan accordingly.
• Another announcement pointed out that EB-1 and EB-2 cut-off dates will be advanced worldwide in September.
• USCIS is expected to announce the cut-off dates of the adjustment of status applications next month as well.
• Lastly, despite these set-backs, the State Department foresees a return to all cutoff dates mentioned in the August Visa Bulletin which gives these applicants a glimmer of hope.

As the fiscal consular year ends by September each year, retrogressions are common. However, the very high demand for adjustment of status applications and use of visa numbers at consular offices have added advancement of cutoff dates and unavailability of dates to the queue of existing retrogressions. The final hope now is that in the new fiscal year starting October 1, 2019 everything will return to the original final action dates.

To follow the above analysis, please keep in mind that priority date means that the immigrant visas will be available to individuals whose priority date is earlier than the cut-off date. If you are want to run a comparison between visa bulletins and the changes to your own application dates, be it for retrogression or filing dates, subscribe to Green Card Dashboard.