Visa Bulletin Predictions by Charlie Oppenheim - June 2016 and Onward

As usual, the State Department's Charlie Oppenheim provided his monthly predictions and insights following the publication of the June monthly visa bulletin to AILA. Charlie's discussions of the trends and future movements of the visa bulletin are particularly important for immigration attorneys and intending immigrants to plan their cases accordingly. The following are the highlights for this month:

Employment 1st Demand and Impact to Other Categories: Charlie expects demand for EB-1 Worldwide visas remains to be very high, hinting that a cut-off dates may be a possibility in the future. If that happens, other categories will likely to be impacted negatively too.

Employment 2nd India: EB-2 India final action date retrogressed from November 8, 2008 (in May) to October 1, 2004 (in June) partially because of upgrades from EB-3. Charlie continues to discuss about his inability to get better visibility of the visa usage under the mechanism of adjustment of status.

Employment 2nd and 3rd, China: As predicted previously, the final action date for both EB-2 and EB-3 China will retrogress to January 1, 2010, in June. The cut-off date will not likely change through the end of this fiscal year. This will stop the "downgrade phenomenon", according to Charlie.

Employment 4th and Certain Religious Workers (SR): The final action date of January 1, 2010 will likely to remain for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Employment 4th India and Mexico: These categories will "definitely" oversubscribe during the summer. Retrogression will occur sooner or later. Charlie said a January 1, 2010 cut-off date will be imposed when that happens. For India, a high demand for religious worker visas partially causes the problem. For Mexico, demand for EB-4 visas is caused by high numbers of Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJS) filings.

Family 4th India: Demand has been high. Visa usage is approaching the annual country cap. The current cut-off date of January 1, 2001 will not likely advance for the remainder of the fiscal year. In fact, this category may retrogress as early as June.

Family 4th China: The final action date for FB-4 China will retrogress in June to January 1, 2003 due to extremely high demand. However, Charlie opined that, unlike FB-4 India, advancement is still possible for FB-4 China before October.