Originally Posted by
Spectator
gcvijay,
I agree with him to a point, but not to completely dismissing it as he does.
There has to be an understanding of the limitations of the Inventory data and what can be reliably inferred from it. I don't think people always do that.
We know there is a problem with double counting porting cases in both EB2 and EB3.
For Countries that are Current or near Current, the Inventory does not represent all I-485 submitted. The I-140 associated with it must also be approved.
That means that regular processed I-140 cases may not appear for some time and that the I-485 may be approved between Inventories - it may never appear in an Inventory at all.
That is particularly possible for categories such as EB2-NIW and EB1C where PP is not available.
For habitually retrogressed Countries, the data should be a better indicator. Of course, that does assume that USCIS are showing all the cases. You know what they say about people who assume.
It was very noticeable when EB3-ROW moved forward initially that many more cases were appearing.
Having said that, for retrogressed Countries, the numbers were in fairly good agreement with the Demand Data that DOS used to publish.
People tend not to consider that CP exists and may represent significant numbers for some Countries/Categories in addition to the AOS cases that the Inventory purports to show.
People tend to forget that EB3-EW also use up the EB3 allocation - albeit only 5k per year.
The change in numbers between Inventories only represents a net change - it's impossible to know visa use if you don't also know how many were added during the period.
It's better than nothing. I think we would all agree it's better to have the Inventory published than have no information at all. I certainly feel that way and miss those reports that are no longer published, such as USCIS Dashboard and the DOS Demand Data.