The USCIS has announced the priority dates for Employment and Family Immigration visas for the month of October, the first month of new fiscal year 2013. As many people had hoped for NIW employment-based immigration to be current, the cutoff date has moved to January 1st, 2012. While on August 30th, 2012, Charlie Oppenheim of the Department of State’s Visa Office had made a similar announcement. (….”EB-2 worldwide may go current in October, or it may go to early 2012 and then current in the November Visa Bulletin – a 2 step process. Why the delay? Employment-based numbers move in a fairly predictable usage pattern (unlike family-based cases). As a result, the Visa Office prefers to have a steady usage of EB cases per month. There are expected to be many EB-2 worldwide cases pending or filed in October, and slowing the usage could help predict usage for the rest of the year. A “correction” in EB-2 worldwide towards the latter part of FY2013 could happen (in other words, potentially visa retrogression for EB-2 worldwide and no longer current)”.) (On September 5th 2012, we had posted this information on our Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/USLawGroup) We can predict everything will be back to normal this November, or this EB-2 Cutoff will be continued, however it’s expected not be long.
