EB Immigrant Visa Dates to Retrogress for India and China
Posted Mar 17, 2000

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has received word from the U.S. Department of State (DOS) that the April 2000 visa cut-off date chart will show retrogressions in the EB2 and EB3 categories for Indian and Chinese nationals. DOS had indicated that when INS begins to significantly reduce its backlog of adjustment of status (I-485) cases, thereby utilizing more of the visa numbers, DOS will need to establish cut-off dates.

DOS believes that INS has approved a large volume of I-485s in the past two to three weeks, which should lead to a retrogression in April 2000 dates for Chinese and Indian nationals. The April visa chart is due to be released some time during the week of March 13.

We at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy have been noticing an increase in the number of I-485 approvals that we have been receiving lately. We are especially impressed with the Texas Service Center of INS, which historically was the slowest of the four service centers and which now has started issuing approvals for cases filed about 1 year ago! We are pleased that the earlier estimates of a 3-year processing time at TSC have improved considerably but with this benefit comes the countervailing problem of people not being able to file I-485 when the retrogression occurs!

The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, P.C.