Originally Posted by
Spectator
Jack,
Once again, thanks for reporting this. It appears the information in the articles by Alan Lee was very accurate.
I hadn't even been looking for the DHS Statistics because they usually come out much later than those from DOS (which still haven't been published). They are usually pretty close to the official DOS figures.
Usage By Category
EB1 ---- 25,251
EB2 ---- 66,831
EB3 ---- 37,216
EB4 ----- 6,701
EB5 ----- 3,340
Total - 139,339
It is an absolute shocker that EB3 received so few visas yet again.
Theoretical spillover from EB1/4/5 appears to be 24.6k. In reality, EB2 received 26.8k which is 2.2k more than was available. Effectively, EB2 robbed EB3 of visas.
Since EB2-C are known to have used at least 8.3k visas, that would make the EB2-I share about 25-26k for SOFAD of about 34k.
That would mean that EB2-ROW/M/P used very close to their 34.4k allocation. If they didn't, then SOFAD must be far higher, but there are limits, if the information about EB2-C is correct and taking into account that India received 33.6k EB visas in total across EB1 - EB5.
The higher SOFAD also indicates that there were a few thousand EB2-IC cases we either didn't know about, or Porting was much higher than anticipated.
Consular Processing in EB2 represented 2.5%, EB3 was 20.0% and CP was 10.7% overall for EB.
We will know when the official DOS Visa Statistics are published, which have the Country breakdown.
Breakdown of EB1
EB1A -------- 2,524 -- 23.67%
EB1B -------- 2,466 -- 23.12%
EB1C -------- 5,675 -- 53.21%
Dependents - 14,586 -- Ratio 2.38 approvals per Primary
Total ------ 25,251
That is very similar to the split for FY2010.
As it affects EB3, it is interesting that Mexico received 9,164 EB visas and Philippines 7,398.
Since neither Country uses huge numbers in other EB Categories, it suggests high usage in EB3, which would depress the numbers available to EB3-ROW.
South Korea again used a very high number of EB visas - 12.6k.