Daijiworld Media Network - Washington
Washington, Sep 3: The United States has warned that employment-based first-preference (EB-1) green cards for Indian applicants could become unavailable within weeks due to heavy demand, adding fresh pressure to an already severe backlog.
In its September Visa Bulletin, the US State Department said high demand and the use of EB-1 immigrant visa numbers by applicants chargeable to India could exhaust the country's allocation before the US fiscal year ends on September 30.
“High demand and number use by aliens chargeable to India in the EB-1 visa category may necessitate making the category unavailable in the coming weeks if India's pro-rated limit in the EB-1 category is reached before the fiscal year ends,” the department said.
The department said the situation would be continuously monitored and any necessary adjustments made accordingly.
EB-1 is the employment-based first-preference category covering priority workers, including people with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers, and certain multinational executives and managers.
The warning is significant for Indian applicants as several other employment-based green-card categories are already severely constrained.
For September, the EB-1 India final action date is October 15, 2022. This means an Indian applicant generally must have a priority date earlier than the listed cutoff for a visa number to be available for final action, subject to other eligibility requirements.
India's EB-2 category, covering professionals with advanced degrees and people of exceptional ability, is listed as “U” or unavailable in the September bulletin. The State Department defines “U” as meaning visa numbers are not authorised for issuance in that category during the period concerned. EB-2 India was also unavailable in August.
The backlog is particularly stark in the employment-based third-preference category. The EB-3 India final action date for September is January 1, 2014, putting the queue more than 12 years behind.
For comparison, the EB-3 date is September 1, 2024, for most countries not separately listed in the bulletin, January 1, 2022, for mainland China and August 1, 2023, for the Philippines.
India's unreserved EB-5 investor category is also unavailable for final action in September. However, EB-5 set-aside categories for rural projects, high-unemployment areas and infrastructure remain current for all countries.
The dates-for-filing chart offers somewhat more room. For India, the September dates are December 1, 2023, for EB-1, January 15, 2015, for EB-2 and January 15, 2015, for EB-3.
Applicants seeking adjustment of status from within the US must, however, check which chart the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has authorised for use in a particular month.
The pressure on Indian employment-based applicants stems largely from heavy demand combined with statutory limits on the number of employment-based immigrant visas available each year.
For fiscal 2026, the State Department said the worldwide employment-based preference limit is 186,317. US immigration law also generally imposes a 7 per cent per-country limit across family- and employment-based preference visas, although carryover provisions affect the final calculations.