The Department of State has issued the visa bulletin for the new fiscal year beginning on October 1, 2009. As predicted, retrogression in many categories continues with some dates being pushed back even further than they were before numbers became unavailable earlier this year.  Last year, we explained why the Department of State keeps priority dates early at the beginning of the fiscal year and then advances them later in the year.

The employment based first preference (EB-1) category will remain current for all nationalities. Cut-off dates in the EB-2 category will advance by two weeks for India, to January 22, 2005, and just over 2 months for China, to March 22, 2005. The EB-2 category will remain current for all other countries.

The EB-3 category remains severely backlogged but will once again be available with cut-off dates of June 1, 2002, and even earlier dates for Indian (April 15, 2001), Chinese (February 22, 2002) and Mexican (May 1, 2002) nationals. The cut-off dates for the EB-3 other worker category have been set at June 1, 2001 except for Indian nationals who will have a cut-off date of April 15, 2001.

The EB-4 religious worker category and the EB-5 immigrant investor categories also remain current. While these pilot programs are set to sunset on September 30, 2009, it is expected that Congress will extend them for an additional period of time.