Employment Based Visa Bulletin-February 2010

The Department of State has released the new visa bulletin for February 2010 on January 8, 2010.

USCIS has reported last month that the EB-1 category was still current for all countries. In the EB-2 category, cutoff dates for mainland Chinese nationals progressed one month from April 1, 2005 to May 1, 2005, but remained the same for Indian nationals. In the EB-3 category, the cutoff dates for mainland Chinese nationals progressed 2 months from June 1, 2002 to August 1, 2002 and progressed 53 days for Indian nationals from May 1, 2001 to June 22, 2001.

This month in the EB-2 category, cutoff dates for mainland Chinese nationals moved forward 21 days from May 1, 2005 to May 22, 2005; for Indian nationals, the cutoff date remained unchanged (January 22, 2005). In the EB-3 category, cutoff dates for mainland Chinese nationals moved forward from August 1, 2002 to September 22, 2002. For Indian nationals applying in the EB-3 category, cutoff dates remained unchanged from last month (June 22, 2001). Once again, the EB-1 category is still current.

Visa numbers for the EB-1 category remained current throughout the year 2009. From October 2009 until now, the EB-2 and EB-3 categories have not changed drastically as both are still heavily backlogged. We hope that things will improve in coming months.