Visa Bulletin – September 2019

The Department of State posted the visa bulletin for September today. See
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2019/visa-bulletin-for-september-2019.html  for the visa bulletin for September 2019.

USCIS advised that it will accept adjustment of status petitions for employment-based adjustment of status petitions for September based upon the final action date. USCIS will continue to accept family-based adjustment of status petitions based on the filing date. See https://www.uscis.gov/visabulletininfo for the updated information.

Due to a combination of increased demand in some visa categories and larger than expected use of visa numbers in others, the State Department will immediately retrogress EB-1 China and EB-3 China and India, while advancing cutoff dates in September for EB-1 and EB-2 Worldwide. EB-1 India is confirmed to be already unavailable. According to the State Department’s September Visa Bulletin, cutoff dates for issuance of an immigrant visa will be as follows: 

• EB-1: All countries except for China and India will advance by more than one year, to October 1, 2017. China will immediately retrogress to January 1, 2014. India has been unavailable since July.
• EB-2: All countries except for India and China will advance by one year to, January 1, 2018. China will remain at January 1, 2017, while India advance by six days, to May 8, 2009. 
• EB-3 Professional and Skilled Workers: Most countries will maintain their August cutoff date of July 1, 2016. China will immediately retrogress by two and a half years, to January 1, 2014, while India will immediately retrogress by six months, to July 1, 2005.
• EB-5: Both the Regional and Non-Regional Center categories will advance one week for China and Vietnam, to October 22, 2014. India will advance by almost three years, to September 1, 2017.  All other countries will remain current.