EB2 Predictions (Rather Calculations) - 2011

[vedu]

If spouce is from a different country (other than India, China), applicant can use her nationality as country of chargeability and use ROW visa

So, do we need to deduct these cases from our current annual perm number calculations?

[nishant2200]

Country of Chargeability is what counts.

Where you born, that's the country of chargeability. In fact, you can even count your spouse's country of birth as chargability if that favors you. The lawyer puts a letter to USCIS indicating to charge spouse's country of birth, as there is no official box in the forms for this.

Let me give you one workflow, which I believe causes significant bleeding from EB2 ROW, which could have come to us.

Many indians settled in middle east many years back. Many of them are quite well off. Their kids born in middle east (Dubai, UAE, etc). They send these kids to India on engineering, medical etc, they can afford the donation fees needed. Next these guys come to USA to do masters. And next when they start working, few years down the line, EB2 ROW, since they were not born in India. I believe children of Indians born in foreign countries like this, are occupying a fair chunk of EB2 ROW. Trackitt trend maybe analysed to come to some formal percentage.

Very good observation vedu. I was just telling Teddy of this few days back.

Note: whatever I say, is for observation, learning, analysis purpose. Should not be counted as my positive or negative opinion about such events or workflows. It is what it is..

Guys,

I was looking at the trackitt I-485 inventory and noticed that some cases show nationality as "India" and Country of Chargeability as some other country. What does this mean? Is it possible that these cases are counted towards ROW?

Another related thing I noticed is that there are approximately 200 cases on trackitt with Indian nationality and with priority dates ranging from March 2011 to August, 2007. Most of these cases are already greened because the country of chargeability is different. So, the question is do we need to reduce our PERM (India) inventory accordingly. We obtained the existing PERM India numbers by filtering on the "Nationality", and not necessarily on the "Country of chargeability".

[bieber]

4. NVC fee notices are no guarantee that the dates will move so shortly. You have to pay fees within a year, or your case is considered abandoned. Once you pay fees, they are valid forever.

May be they will use that number to setting up cut off date incase CIS doesn't have demand (temporarily)

[veni001]

I have a doubt

After all the documentarily qualified E1, E2 row are alloted visa numbers , let us imagine there is some extras remaining say 100 could it be alloted to IC already pre- adjudicated with PD post Apr 15 , eventhough the PD is not moved .

Nope, as per law they can not assign/issue VISA number unless PD is current!

[bieber]

So, do we need to deduct these cases from our current annual perm number calculations?

Certainly, Veni and Spec did the thourough analysis around this and let's see if if they think this is significant

[nishant2200]

So, do we need to deduct these cases from our current annual perm number calculations?

Hmm. good point. Here is meaning of the column in PERM as per the flddatacenter website.

COUNTRY_OF_CITZENSHIP Country of citizenship of the foreign worker being sponsored by the employer for permanent employment in the United States.

So now, this is different than what actually counts, which is the Country of Chargeability.

Need to find out from trackitt trend, how many people with Nationality India, but Chargeability Not India, which can give some sort of indicator. Maybe it's very small. Maybe its not that small.

[rahil1]

Any amount of calculations cannot predict anything about the bulletin movement and there is nno rhyme or reason..It is just random. I have been a little bitter as I missed the date by 17 days... However I am happy that my pd is not april15 and that would have been terrible..

[whereismygclost]

Spot on Nishant. I know at least 3 cases which exactly comply point by point to what you laid out of Indians born in Dubai/UAE. They were my engineering classmates in India,did their Masters and got GC in EB2-ROW (long long ago and I am still in the rut ). However I don't know if we extrapolate will these cases amount to a significant number.

Country of Chargeability is what counts.

Where you born, that's the country of chargeability. In fact, you can even count your spouse's country of birth as chargability if that favors you. The lawyer puts a letter to USCIS indicating to charge spouse's country of birth, as there is no official box in the forms for this.

Let me give you one workflow, which I believe causes significant bleeding from EB2 ROW, which could have come to us.

Many indians settled in middle east many years back. Many of them are quite well off. Their kids born in middle east (Dubai, UAE, etc). They send these kids to India on engineering, medical etc, they can afford the donation fees needed. Next these guys come to USA to do masters. And next when they start working, few years down the line, EB2 ROW, since they were not born in India. I believe children of Indians born in foreign countries like this, are occupying a fair chunk of EB2 ROW. Trackitt trend maybe analysed to come to some formal percentage.

Very good observation vedu. I was just telling Teddy of this few days back.

Note: whatever I say, is for observation, learning, analysis purpose. Should not be counted as my positive or negative opinion about such events or workflows. It is what it is..

[Spectator]

Hmm. good point. Here is meaning of the column in PERM as per the flddatacenter website.

COUNTRY_OF_CITZENSHIP Country of citizenship of the foreign worker being sponsored by the employer for permanent employment in the United States.

So now, this is different than what actually counts, which is the Country of Chargeability.

Need to find out from trackitt trend, how many people with Nationality India, but Chargeability Not India, which can give some sort of indicator. Maybe it's very small. Maybe its not that small.

As has been pointed out, the only information in the PERM data is on Nationality.

To date, this year, about 3.5% of EB2 approvals with Indian Nationality have a different Country of Chargeability.

Last year, the figure was around 2.5%.

There are a smaller number where the Nationality is ROW and the C of C is Indian.

In my own calculations, I am discarding 30% of the original PERM cases as making it to I-485 approval.

I am happy that this can include any C of C discrepancies.

Your mileage may vary.

[gcseeker]

Kanmani

Maybe the next step will be for lobby groups to challenge the Kazarian memo legally in a pro business court district and get it overturned. There are too many unknowns from the policy side which can completely throw all these calculations out of the window.

1.Kazarian memo and implications-Legal overturn---or Lawyers learn to game the system next year can cause EB1 surge
2.Porting -Nobody knows..6K is the upper limit...will it increase beyond that...possibility ? maybe ?
3.We are continously assuming the CO will not waste visas and there is some law somewhere which mandates that the spillover flow to EB2.He might very well decide not to build an pipeline and make the visas flow down to EB3-ROW.

Only positive might be the economic recession which is looming on the horizon and might increase SOFAD(keyword might...)

CO might be an nice human being.He might be acting rationally without bias towards any particular visa category.At the end of the day movement for next year beyond 2007 is not guaranteed in any way .Even movement within 2007 is at the mercy of the economy , kazarian memo , porting and internal guidelines.

Regarding Kazarian memo , AILA shared their concerns over numerous RFEs and rejections, but USCIS replied that as per the judgement they have no other choice other than to verify both quantity and quality of the evidences separately i.e, in two steps .

So until the filers find a route to tackle the RFEs , Eb1 usage is expected to be same.

[iamdeb]

Under these trying conditions, what are the options for persons whose I 140 has been approved but havn't been able to file I 485 yet?

a) Move to a different city and different project with same employer and working on different tools and platform but similar role.
b) Move to a different city and different project with same employer and with different role as well.
c) Staying in same project but getting promoted.
d) Switching jobs to a new employer. Will I be able to capture my old PD if my employer withdraws my I 140?
Which one of the above 4 is a feasible option?

[soggadu]

On a lighter vein, my minds eye view of what Q looks like has suddenly become the spitting image of Shrek!

I can't shake it for the moment.

who said number crunchers doesn't have sense of humor...:-) :-)

[Sandeep2011]

If spouce is from a different country (other than India, China), applicant can use her nationality as country of chargeability and use ROW visa

Also, your country of chargeability is dependent on your country of birth. So, if an Indian citizen was born in Kuwait, they will be considered under ROW.

[RRRRRR]

Hi All,

We have been talking about that visa numbers will be wasted if a BTM or a Small Movement does not happen in Q1/Q2 for EB2. I might be wrong but isn't that possible that CO stays put on EB2 and rather then opening the gates he will trickle the visa numbers down to Eb3 which will give the Eb3 people an opportunity to be happy about. I mean we have a huge backlog of Eb3 and i don't think visa will be wasted in that case. Please suggest

[soggadu]

Hi All,

We have been talking about that visa numbers will be wasted if a BTM or a Small Movement does not happen in Q1/Q2 for EB2. I might be wrong but isn't that possible that CO stays put on EB2 and rather then opening the gates he will trickle the visa numbers down to Eb3 which will give the Eb3 people an opportunity to be happy about. I mean we have a huge backlog of Eb3 and i don't think visa will be wasted in that case. Please suggest

By law, all EB2 has to be current to spill visas over to any EB3

[skpanda]

This is possible. If USCIS does not have enough approved EB2 applications to meet next year's spillover, the numbers will trickle down to EB3 (ROW).

However they can do that only when Entire EB2 category is current.

Example: There were around 10K EB1 and 20K EB2-ROW 485s pending 2 months ago. However EB2 IC got spillover inspite of pending applications. Only reason for that was that EB1 and EB2-ROW were CURRENT.

So yes, there is a chance that EB3 (ROW) may get spillover if EB2 does not have enough approved applications but the caveat for DOS/USCIS is they will have to make EB2 current (which i think will be a blessing in disguise for EB2 people.. although there will be a slight delay in getting their GCs.. but then good news is you can have EAD/AP and may not really care about the actual GC).

Makse sense?

Hi All,

We have been talking about that visa numbers will be wasted if a BTM or a Small Movement does not happen in Q1/Q2 for EB2. I might be wrong but isn't that possible that CO stays put on EB2 and rather then opening the gates he will trickle the visa numbers down to Eb3 which will give the Eb3 people an opportunity to be happy about. I mean we have a huge backlog of Eb3 and i don't think visa will be wasted in that case. Please suggest

[nishant2200]

sogaddu, who are the three ladies standing behind you in your avatar.

[nishant2200]

skpanda, I am starting to believe more in this now. So then two observations:
1. They realize SO more, need pipeline, late in the game, leading to Current for EB2 and SO to EB3 ROW. Good for bigger picture because lots of guys get EAD/AP.
2. They realize SO more, need pipeline, early in the game, leading to BTM/UFM, and few people get guaranteed GC, and a few get EAD, and very less SO to EB3 ROW.

Of course these are just two hypothetical situations out of a myriad of scenarios.

This is possible. If USCIS does not have enough approved EB2 applications to meet next year's spillover, the numbers will trickle down to EB3 (ROW).

However they can do that only when Entire EB2 category is current.

Example: There were around 10K EB1 and 20K EB2-ROW 485s pending 2 months ago. However EB2 IC got spillover inspite of pending applications. Only reason for that was that EB1 and EB2-ROW were CURRENT.

So yes, there is a chance that EB3 (ROW) may get spillover if EB2 does not have enough approved applications but the caveat for DOS/USCIS is they will have to make EB2 current (which i think will be a blessing in disguise for EB2 people.. although there will be a slight delay in getting their GCs.. but then good news is you can have EAD/AP and may not really care about the actual GC).

Makse sense?

[skpanda]

Actually when i was talking to my gal before Sept 2011 VB, I talked about these scenarios. Ofcourse there were three more scenarios for Sept 2011 at the time

0a. EB2 IC move by 2+ months
0b. EB2 IC move to around April 2008 for BTM.
0c. EB2 IC are current to take extreme BTM

All these 3 have gone down the bin....hopefully scenario 1 that you mentioned occurs (keeping in mind the large picture that entire EB2 community will get help and few thousand GCs will go down to EB3 which badly needs a break)

skpanda, I am starting to believe more in this now. So then two observations:
1. They realize SO more, need pipeline, late in the game, leading to Current for EB2 and SO to EB3 ROW. Good for bigger picture because lots of guys get EAD/AP.
2. They realize SO more, need pipeline, early in the game, leading to BTM/UFM, and few people get guaranteed GC, and very less SO to EB3 ROW.

[nishant2200]

I wouldn't mind Case 1, everyone gets EAD, although I may "loose" my GC that year because of this.

Actually when i was talking to my gal before Sept 2011 VB, I talked about these scenarios. Ofcourse there were three more scenarios for Sept 2011 at the time

0a. EB2 IC move by 2+ months
0b. EB2 IC move to around April 2008 for BTM.
0c. EB2 IC are current to take extreme BTM

All these 3 have gone down the bin....hopefully scenario 1 that you mentioned occurs (keeping in mind the large picture that entire EB2 community will get help and few thousand GCs will go down to EB3 which badly needs a break)

[skpanda]

thats very kind heart of yours speaking... good news is your GC will be delayed by a maximum of 1 year. You will have EAD and AP.. so will the entire EB2 community.


However.. i have set my expectations low and will stick to the rule of PD + 4 years for EAD in EB2. (Mine is Dec 2010 and 2014 is the magic year for me.. if I choose to wait that long ).

I wouldn't mind Case 1, everyone gets EAD, although I may "loose" my GC that year because of this.

[mvinayam]

Gurus,

Is there any possibilty for the PD to go forward atleast till July 1st 2007 before the Spillover season begins in May/June 2012????

[skpanda]

It may be possible.. but that is a speculation. No body can accurately predict that.

If DOS/USCIS decide to be ultra conservative like the current year, the dates will be stuck at 15 Apr 2007 till April/May 2012. Reason for that is PWMBs and Porting applications with PD beofre 15 Apr 2007 will eat away the monthly allocations of 230.

I know you know this... but good news is that you will definately have your GC by end of FY 2012. I know the wait time is painful but then there is nothign that you can do about it. If you set your expecations low and dates actually move to July 2007 before May/ June 2012.. that will be a pleasent outcome. Easier said than done... neways.. Good Luck!

Gurus,

Is there any possibilty for the PD to go forward atleast till July 1st 2007 before the Spillover season begins in May/June 2012????

[iamdeb]

skpanda, I am starting to believe more in this now. So then two observations:
1. They realize SO more, need pipeline, late in the game, leading to Current for EB2 and SO to EB3 ROW. Good for bigger picture because lots of guys get EAD/AP.
2. They realize SO more, need pipeline, early in the game, leading to BTM/UFM, and few people get guaranteed GC, and a few get EAD, and very less SO to EB3 ROW.

Of course these are just two hypothetical situations out of a myriad of scenarios.

I also hoping for option 1. Do you see either of the options being exercised in near future?

[nishant2200]

I also hoping for option 1. Do you see either of the options being exercised in near future?

I personally don't see them making EB2 current. July 2007 will not be repeated. They will strategize, work their way around it. How, I don't know yet.

But since I don't have any data/facts yet to base this on, and neither do we have any data/facts yet to say they will make it current, we just have to base it on perception and intent of trend. CO uses words like he thinks it's extremely unwise ... So he believes in "wisdom". Can't read his mind. Also I don't think he is only person deciding all this, his hands are tied by law and consensus with USCIS, I would like to say.