A New Way to Look at Visa Bulletins

Today we added another feature to our Visa Bulletin Toolbox: Instead of reading visa bulletins by month, you will be able to select just your category and see years of cutoff dates all on one page, plus month-to-month movement and your overall wait time. Both employment-based and family-sponsored categories are included, covering every visa bulletin released since 2002. That is 10 years worth of data at your finger tip.

Although visa number consumption is carefully regulated by the Department of State, there are occasional hiccups, or even big mess up sometimes, like the one in 2007. You can spot those patterns and sudden changes easily with the new table format. Visa allocation is dependent on demand data, which always fluctuates making it difficult to predict next month’s bulletin. But over a longer period of time the overall trend stays relatively stable. The retrogression tracker has a graph showing this effect for EB2 and EB3 only, but the new data tables cover all categories and all countries. Here is an example for India EB2’s Cutoff Dates:

VB Year VB Month Cut-Off Date (Y-M-D) Movement (days) Wait Time (days)
2012 3 2010-05-01 120 670
2012 2 2010-01-01 365 761
2012 1 2009-01-01 292 1095
2011 12 2008-03-15 135 1356
2011 11 2007-11-01 109 1461
2011 10 2007-07-15 91 1539
2011 9 2007-04-15 0 1600
2011 8 2007-04-15 38 1569
2011 7 2007-03-08 144 1576
2011 6 2006-10-15 106 1690
2011 5 2006-07-01 54 1765
2011 4 2006-05-08 0 1789
2011 3 2006-05-08 0 1758
2011 2 2006-05-08 0 1730
2011 1 2006-05-08 0 1699
2010 12 2006-05-08 0 1668
2010 11 2006-05-08 0 1638
2010 10 2006-05-08 0 1607
2010 9 2006-05-08 68 1577
2010 8 2006-03-01 151 1614
2010 7 2005-10-01 242 1734
2010 6 2005-02-01 0 1946
2010 5 2005-02-01 0 1915
2010 4 2005-02-01 0 1885
2010 3 2005-02-01 10 1854
2010 2 22JAN05
2010 1 22JAN05
2009 12 2005-01-22 0 1774
2009 11 2005-01-22 0 1744
2009 10 2005-01-22 14 1713
2009 9 2005-01-08 465 1697
2009 8 2003-10-01 1369 2131
2009 7 2000-01-01 0 3469
2009 6 2000-01-01 1506 3439
2009 5 2004-02-15 0 1902
2009 4 2004-02-15 0 1872
2009 3 2004-02-15 45 1841
2009 2 2004-01-01 184 1858
2009 1 2003-07-01 30 2011
2008 12 2003-06-01 0 2010
2008 11 2003-06-01 61 1980
2008 10 2003-04-01 1218 2010
2008 9 2006-08-01 61 762
2008 8 2006-06-01 791 792
2008 7 2004-04-01 0 1552
2008 6 2004-04-01 91 1522
2008 5 2004-01-01 31 1582
2008 4 2003-12-01 1583
2008 3 U Unavailable Unavailable
2008 2 U Unavailable Unavailable
2008 1 2000-01-01 731 2922
2007 12 2002-01-01 821 2160
2007 11 2004-04-01 0 1309
2007 10 2004-04-01 0 1278
2007 9 2004-04-01 1248
2007 8 U Unavailable Unavailable
2007 7 C Current Current
2007 6 2004-04-01 449 1156
2007 5 2003-01-08 0 1574
2007 4 2003-01-08 0 1544
2007 3 2003-01-08 0 1513
2007 2 2003-01-08 0 1485
2007 1 2003-01-08 0 1454

2 thoughts on “A New Way to Look at Visa Bulletins”

  1. anyone out there can you please explain to me what is a cut-off date for visa application.i have file a petition for my fiance once and they denied our case.i just wonder if this cut-off date might be related to my case.please give some clear explanation please.thanks

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