USCIS EB I-485 & I-140 Processing Statistics As Of 11/30/13

USCIS EB I-140 Processing Statistics 

	TSC	NSC	National
Pending	7,665	1,849	9,558
Customer Action Wait	966	2,833	3,799
Completed	2,462	1,550	4,013
New Receipt	2,653	1,733	4,386

The number of completed cases in most categories decreased at both NSC and TSC in the last one month.

USCIS EB I-485 Processing Statistics

EB And FB Green Cards Alloted in Fiscal Year 2013

Please see below table describing the employment based and family based green card quota and actual allocation for fiscal year (FY) 2013:

Family Based:

All Countries:

Category	Quota	Actual Allocation
F1	23,400	25,379
F2A	87,934	74,655
F2B	26,266	22,502
F3	23,400	23,931
F4	65,000	69,286
Total	226,000	215,753

Around 10,000 visas were wasted in FB category in the FY 2013. This will be allotted to EB category in FY 2014. Please see this blog post for more details.

Employment Based:

USCIS Extends Relief Measures for Filipino Typhoon Victims

If you know anyone from Philippines, please forward this blog post to them.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reminds those affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines on Nov. 8, 2013, of agency efforts to provide relief to victims of the typhoon.
Filipino nationals in the United States should visit www.uscis.gov to learn about a series of existing relief measures that may be available to them if requested. These relief measures include:

• A change or extension of nonimmigrant status for an individual currently in the United States, even when the request is filed after the authorized period of admission has expired;
• An extension of certain grants of parole made by USCIS;
• An extension of certain grants of advance parole, and expedited processing of advance parole requests;
• Expedited adjudication and approval, where possible, of requests for off-campus employment authorization for F-1 students experiencing severe economic hardship;
• Expedited processing of immigrant petitions for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens;
• Expedited adjudication of employment authorization applications, where appropriate; and
• Assistance to LPRs stranded overseas without immigration or travel documents, such as Permanent Resident Cards (Green Cards). USCIS and the Department of State will coordinate on these matters when the LPR is stranded in a place that has no local USCIS office.

EB3 Philippines: Fiscal Year 2014 Movement

One of the readers asked me about EB3 Philippines movement in 2014.

I did some number crunching and it looks like EB3 Philippines could have a big jump forward by around 8-12 months around April or May VB. It could continue to move forward another 4-6 months total in the next few VB's.

This is based on expected spillovers from both EB and FB category as well as other factors typically applied by USCIS/DOS to calculate visa bulletin movement.

These numbers are based on around 4 months old data (I-485 pending inventory with Oct 1 data and November 2013 demand data based on Oct 8 data). The latest inventory could give more accurate data and hence expected forward movement in all EB categories.

Senate and House Calendar 2014

Senate Calendar 2014:

113th Congress, 2nd Session

The tentative schedule for 2014 has been announced. The list below identifies expected non-legislative periods (days that the Senate will not be in session). The schedule is also available in calendar format (pdf image). The 2013 tentative schedule is still available.

Date	Action	Note
Jan 6	Convene
Jan 20 - Jan 24	State Work Period	Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
Feb 17 - Feb 21	State Work Period	Presidents' Day- Feb 17
Mar 17 - Mar 21	State Work Period
Apr 14 - Apr 25	State Work Period
May 26 - May 30	State Work Period	Memorial Day- May 26
Jun 30 - Jul 4	State Work Period	Independence Day- Jul 4
Aug 4 - Sep 5	State Work Period	Labor Day- Sep 1
Target Adjournment Date	TBD

F2A Category: Fiscal Year 2014 Movement

The AILA Department of State Liaison Committee has been informed by the State Department that due to the demand of F2A visas by Mexican nationals, the Mexico F2A visa preference category is expected to retrogress in the spring of FY2014.

If the return rate for this visa category decreases, the retrogression may come sooner than spring of FY2014. There is a 50% return rate worldwide for F2A visas which may be due to the fact that some applicants will convert to Immediate Relative visas in order to take advantage of the Provisional Waiver Program or some marriages may terminate before the visa is available.

March 2014 Visa Bulletin Predictions

For January 2014 Visa Bulletin, please click here: http://blog.mygcvisa.com/2013/12/january-2014-visa-bulletin.html

For March 2013 Visa Bulletin, please click here: http://blog.mygcvisa.com/2014/02/march-2014-visa-bulletin.html

Please see March 2014 Visa Bulletin Predictions below (for both Family Based and Employment Based):

Quick Summary:

• EB1, EB4, EB 5: Current
• EB2 Rest Of World: Current
  EB2 China: 4 weeks (still behind EB3 China)
  EB2 India: 0 day. Please see article
• EB3 (ROW, China, Mexico): 0 to 2.5 months. Please see article.
  EB3 India: 0 day
  EB3 Philippines: 4-8 weeks
• FB categories: 1-5 weeks. Please see article.
• F2A: 0 day. It is likely to remain at this date for next few months.

Please Note: These numbers do not include the 10,000 additional unused visas from FB category to EB category.

Family Based:

Family-Sponsored	All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA- mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPPINES
F1	22JAN07	22JAN07	22JAN07	08OCT93	22SEP01
F2A	08SEP13	08SEP13	08SEP13	01SEP13	08SEP13
F2B	22AUG06	22AUG06	22AUG06	01MAY93	22JUN03
F3	15JUN03	15JUN03	15JUN03	08JUN93	15FEB93
F4	15NOV01	15NOV01	15NOV01	15NOV96	15SEP90

Employment Based:

February 2014 Visa Bulletin Analysis

For February 2014 Visa Bulletin, please click here: http://blog.mygcvisa.com/2014/01/february-2014-visa-bulletin.html

Please see below analysis of February 2014 Visa Bulletin:

EB1: All EB1 categories are current and should continue to remain current for fiscal year. Demand continues to be around 1000-1200 every month.

EB2 ROW: This category continues to remain current. Demand in EB2ROW continues to be very low at an average of around 300 per month. This is good news for EB2 India and China, as they could get a higher spillover in FY 2014.

EB2 China: As expected, EB2 China also moved forward by 4 weeks. It should continue to move forward around 3 to 5 weeks per month. It is still be behind EB3 China which is ahead by more than 3 years.

EB2 India: There was no change in EB2 India movement. As we had mentioned earlier, there was huge retrogression in EB2 India due to large amount of porting from EB3 India to EB2 India. We have added a blog post exclusive to EB2 India movement in fiscal year 2014. Also please see this blog post for updates in EB2 (India, ROW and China) category.

February 2014 Visa Bulletin

For January 2014 Visa Bulletin, please click here: http://blog.mygcvisa.com/2013/12/january-2014-visa-bulletin.html

February 2014 Visa Bulletin has been released (valid from February 1 to February 28 only). Please see below for more details.

Family Based:

Family-Sponsored	All Charge -ability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA- mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPPINES
F1	01JAN07	01JAN07	01JAN07	01OCT93	15AUG01
F2A	08SEP13	08SEP13	08SEP13	01SEP13	08SEP13
F2B	08JUL06	08JUL06	08JUL06	01MAY93	22MAY03
F3	15MAY03	15MAY03	15MAY03	01JUN93	08FEB93
F4	22OCT01	22OCT01	22OCT01	08NOV96	08AUG90

Employment Based:

February 2014 Demand Data

Demand data is used by DOS to calculate the monthly visa bulletin dates. If you are not familiar with demand data, please see this article: What is Demand Data?

This blog post is a place holder in case DOS decides to release February 2014 demand data. As many of you know, they did not release the December 2013 and January 2014 demand data.

EB2 India: As many of you know, due to huge demand from EB3 India porting to EB2 India, USCIS had to stop allocating visas to EB2 India category from November 20. EB2 India dates moved back to November 2004 due to this heaving demand from porters from EB3 category.

Currently the porting cases are been counted twice in both EB3 and EB2 category (since they do not have a system to accurately track various porting cases). Please see article.

EB3 ROW: The  real demand for EB3 ROW/Mexico/China should start showing up in the next I-485 pending inventory. However since VB dates keep moving forward and visa is available, not all cases would appear in the January demand data. This is because demand data only contains preadjudicated cases (and CP cases).

Currently it takes about 4+ months to process I-485 and preadjudicate case. Hence demand data for these categories could appear to be low, though dates have moved by 3+ years.

The most accurate data would show up in the I-485 pending inventory. However the latest version has data only till October 1.

USCIS US Citizen I-129F, I-130 & I-485 Processing Statistics As Of 10/31/13

Please see below latest US Citizen Beneficiary Statistics released by USCIS:

USCIS I-130 - Immediate Relative Category Processing Statistics:

	CSC	VSC	National
All Other Pending	8,091	11,918	379,608
Customer action waiting	2,096	1,964	4,096
Completed	1,315	812	26,365
New receipts	81	1,500	47,416

CSC = California Service Center 
VSC = Vermont Service Center 
    
USCIS I-129F Processing Statistics:

	CSC	VSC	National
All Other Pending	2,141	2,062	11,505
Customer action waiting	2,419	656	4,245
Completed	3,263	535	7,493
New receipts	1,581	13	4,002

USCIS I-485 Processing Statistics: