Originally Posted by
Spectator
I would agree that EB3 SO has not been handled well. The full allocation was not used, even when EB3-ROW was retrogressed. With Countries retrogressed, no visas in EB3 should be wasted, as the horizontal SO rules come into effect.
It's a myth that EB1 used to provide SO to EB2. It only did so in FY2011 when the introduction of the Kazarian memo caused processing of EB1 to be paused.
Spillover Source to EB2-I ------- FB ------ EB1 ----- EB2 ---- EB4 ----- EB5 --- Other --- Total
FY2010-FY2014 ----------------- 27,659 -- 12,156 -- 23,786 -- 8,263 -- 17,315 -- 1,210 -- 90,389
11,158, or 92% of EB1 spillover to EB2 came in FY2011.
The real source of perceived SO from EB1 was not EB1 itself, but under use in Family based (criminal, since all categories are always been retrogressed), EB5 and EB4.
DOS has since sorted out the FB allocations and number use has increased in EB5 and EB4.
That leaves horizontal SO within EB2, which has now also dried up. Even some of that was a bit of an illusion, since very slow PERM processing at various times during the period created a lack of ROW I-485 applications within a FY.
As for your point about EB3-I not moving in FY2012, at that time EB2-I was running out of inventory, so CO pushed the dates forward to create a new one and have visibility into future demand. The same was not true of EB3-I at that time, so the dates were not advanced for EB3-I.
Today, we have the opposite situation. EB3-I has run out of the previous inventory because they have now surpassed July 2007. CO needs to build a new inventory for demand forecast purposes. There is still plenty of EB2-I inventory, so there is no need to advance those dates more than supply of visas allows.