Visa Bulletin September 2010
The State Department makes official determinations of the
worldwide numerical annual limits on immigrants according to the relevant
portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and based on data provided
by U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS). For Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, the
numerical limitations have been determined as follows:
Limit for Worldwide Family-Sponsored (FS) preference
immigrants: 226,000
Limit for Worldwide Employment-Based (EB) preference
immigrants: 150,657
Under the INA, the per-country limit for preference
immigrants is set at 7% of the total annual family-sponsored and
employment-based preference limits. Therefore, the per-country limit for FY-2010
is 26,366. The dependent area limit is set at 2% by the INA, or 7,533 for
FY-2010.
Immigrant visas are also numerically limited by category.
Within FS preferences and EB preferences, the INA sets preference classes with
for the allocation of immigrant visas.
According to The Department of State’s Bureau of Consular
Affairs’ monthly Visa Bulletin for September 2010, Dominican Republic, India,
Mexico, Philippines and China-mainland born, are oversubscribed areas, which
means that the visa demand exceeds the per-country limit. The Bulletin lists the
cut-off dates for these countries. Most of the EB preference classes are current
(no backlog) with several important exceptions. For the EB-3 preference class
(skilled workers, professionals and other workers) and for unskilled workers,
there exists a huge backlog for all the countries.
Comparing the Visa Bulleting for August 2010 with September
2010, the cut-off date has moved anywhere from 2 months to 1 year forward for
the FS preference classes. For the Philippines, the movement was between 8 to 12
months. For the EB preference classes, EB-3 moved forward 6 months, and EB-other
workers moved forward 12 months. However, the results for EB-2 and EB-3 for
chargeability areas China-mainland born and India were very slight, with the
cut-off date for EB-3 class from India remaining the same at January 1, 2002.
A provision of the American Competitiveness in the 21st
Century Act (AC21) has been used in recent years to allow oversubscribed
countries such as China-mainland born and India to use large amounts of EB-1 and
EB-2 by overriding the per-country limit to ensure that all available Employment
preference numbers will be used. | 
