Thanks Spec for the quick analysis. Look forward to detailed analysis.
I am trying to tie EB3ROW inventory to what the CO said in the visa bulletin. The inventory for EB3ROW is 13K, does CO mean that it is sufficient for this year ? or is he saying we are finished with EB3ROW quota for the year, which I highly suspect. If the former is right, then EB3I should expect a huge spillover next year since there is hardly 5-8K EB3ROW demand for 2013 and 2014. Please enlighten.
P.S.: I am not EB3I
I am not an expert but I will share my thoughts. If the quota for EB3Row is used up for this year, it should be 'U' -unavailable. It cannot have a cut off date. I am assuming that they are going to clear all the cases till Marchl 2011 by the end of this FY. Next year will be interesting. My PD is july 2006. I am eagerly waiting for some spillover.Originally Posted by redwood
Thanks
Amul
the april'14 inventory is 13k for eb3 row. Will this have any impact on the eb3 I ?
will eb3I advance like last year ?
Guru's please correct me if my thinking is wrong.
heard mentioning that they have 7% quota and visas are issued like more like quarterly basis or monthly basis , so when the dos sees uscis asking for more visas for a category then CO sees like more demand than available and establishes cutoff date for that quarter. so EB3 row may have finished up its may/june/july quota.
please correct me if am wrong.
Amul, am hoping there will be huge spill to eb3I over next year. (or perhaps this year end (aug/sept/oct'14) to save eb3row visa wastage.) By looking at the perm filing numbers, eb2 approvals and 485 inventory/processing times.
good luck
In my opinion no.
EB3-ROW have sufficient cases to reach their allocation within the new COD of 01APR11. That means no Fall Across within EB3 to EB3-I this year.
Also, remember that the USCIS Inventory only represents AOS cases. ROW have around 15% CP cases, so the 13.1k in the USCIS Inventory might represent 15.4k total cases as of April 1, 2014.
Extrapolating to today, cases before April 2011 look to be more than the remaining allocation I believe they have left.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
Generally, that is true, but there is considerable latitude in how individual Categories and groups are handled within the overall 27% per quarter limit.
CO mentioned in October that, this year, as much as possible, he was going to "front load" movement (and therefore potentially approvals) and retrogress later if necessary. With essentially no EB2-I since November and low EB2-ROW approvals all year, he has had plenty of visas to play with within the overall 27% per quarter limit for EB3 use.
On a more general level, Mr. Oppenheim shared that his goal is to advance the cutoff dates more at the beginning of the fiscal year (October, November and December, and January visa bulletins) and then, as he is able to gauge demand for a particular preference category, adjust accordingly by either slowing down or retrogressing (if demand is high) or advancing even more (is demand turns out to be low).
Last edited by Spectator; 05-08-2014 at 02:25 PM.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
eb3I inventory for next 6 months from current PD as reported by uscis over the time:
EB3I jan-2011 jan-2013 Apr-2013 july-2013 oct-2013 jan-2014 Apr-2014 possible
2003 Oct 1210 985 942 899 877 865 951 865
2003 Nov 1161 917 873 850 823 813 797 797
2003 Dec 1185 1010 952 899 885 1304 848 848
2004 Jan 1000 850 813 772 753 924 725 725
2004 Feb 928 769 724 696 1109 682 663 663
2004Mar 1301 1010 959 923 1437 873 854 854
Total 6785 5541 5263 5039 5884 5461 4838 4752
the 'possible' column is the lowest number from the earlier inventories reported. These next six months were never current after july 2k7 , so there is no possibility of new 485 filings. But they could only decrease because of porting etc.
And also I think in the pending inventory possibly 10% could be abandoned/R2I ones.
I found this nugget at mitbbs.com http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/EB23/32107949.html
My take on this is that the retrogression announced in the June 2014 VB for EB3-C went into effect immediately on the VB publication date.There is a news yet to be confirmed that a Senator's office obtained information from USCIS that Texas Service Center has internally stopped processing EB3 China I-485 applications after May 9. This rumor is supported by zero statistics from online forums that normally report 5 to 15 approvals in the EB3 China category every day.
However, the visa bulletin from Department of State is meant to encourage USCIS to continue processing EB3 China I-485 applications. Could you reach out to your USCIS contact and verify whether Texas Service Center really made such an internal decision? If the answer is yes, could you challenge on what grounds they are allowed to do so? Such an internal decision will hurt hundreds of EB3 China petitioners who have legitimate right to receive their green cards in May 2014 before the visa bulletin retrogress in June.
I think that has happened because there are none to few visas left for EB3-C this year. A 6 year retrogression is as good as being made Unavailable.
Similarly, CO said retrogression for EB2-I to the December 2013 VB Cut Off Dates took place on November 20, 2013 due to excessive visa use.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
I agree w you Spec. Dates being current is no guarantee of a green card. The visa numbers need to be there. If EB3C has already exhausted country quota then it doesn't matter if the dates are current.
I no longer provide calculations/predictions ever since whereismyGC.com was created.
I do run this site only as an administrator. Our goal is to improve clarity of GC process to help people plan their lives better.
Use the info at your risk. None of this is legal advice.
Forum Glossary | Forum Rules and Guidelines | If your published post disappeared, check - Lies and Misinformation thread
Q,
CO gave quite a clever answer when asked by the Chinese about the rumour. http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/EB23/32102179.html
BasicallyQuestion:
A rumor says your office just released a memo to have EB3C 'U' this morning?
It's actually from an immigration officer of senator's office.
Oppenheim, Charlie W
They are wrong I have not, and will not issue such a memo. USCIS is able to receive and process and submit cases which have a priority date which is within the cut-off dates announced in either the May or June Visa Bulletins.
a) USCIS will continue to accept cases within the Cut Off Date in the relevant VB.
b) USCIS will continue to process cases received within the Cut Off Date.
c) USCIS will continue to submit visa requests to DOS as cases are adjudicated.
He carefully did not say that cases with a PD of 01OCT06 up to 01OCT12 would continue to receive approvals. (c) is not the same as saying DOS have any visas left for allocation when USCIS request them at the end of the adjudication process. The cases would just become pre-adjudicated.
From the DOS side, they had already pre-allocated the visa numbers for the May VB that were using Consular Processing, so immediate retrogression as far as issuing visas does not affect them.
CO answered the actual question asked, which was not quite the one that people think was asked.
As you say, a Cut Off Date being current does not guarantee approval, since it also requires a visa number to be available.
The Chinese do not seem (or want) to understand that.
I do think it does say something about the number of Chinese who downgraded from EB2 to EB3.
Last edited by Spectator; 05-17-2014 at 09:26 AM.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
Great Post Spec !
I do not however want to ignore your earlier point about the Armageddon scenario for EB2I. It is a very real possibility and hence I have started looking at EB3ROW as a source for spillover to EB3I (and EB2I, similar to EBC).
Have you looked at such a scenario and what does your analysis say based on limited data (current EB3ROW inventory data and assuming we have 3-5K EB3ROW PERMs annually) ?
As per my analysis, I'm seeing a bright future for EB3-I from next year onwards and it will perform better that EB2-I. We will surely see the scenario like EB3-C in very near future.
Here are my predictions:
By the end FY14, EB3-I PDs could not move beyond mid Dec'03 but by mid FY15 EB3-ROW will become current and it will be in current from there on.
By the end of FY15 we will see EB3-I getting spillovers like 10k+ mainly from EB3-ROW and there on for every year in future we can see spillovers for EB3-I like what we are seeing in EB2-I currently.
In FY16 we might get a chance to see the scenario of downward porting like the current EB3-C.
This might be a little over stretched / bold prediction but this is what I'm seeing with the available data/trends.
I might be ignoring the EB3-Phil CP demand here but still I believe this is what will happen in next 2 years for EB3-I irrespective of EB1 & EB2 effects.
Sorry, this is NOT a wishful thinking but is my own feeling based on all the past and current publicly available data from all the govt. agencies on EB Immigration.
I'm only comparing the downward porting phenomenon and NOT how EB3-C came to that situation.
I can only say that this is NOT completely TRUE to defend my predictions are NOT completely FALSE.
Let me take the nearest prediction for now (and deal with other ones later as we will discuss this in coming months) i.e. EB3-ROW becoming current in mid of FY15. This is certainly a basis for the overall predictions for EB3-I.
Let's take the time-period from Apr'13 to Mar'14:
1) EB3-ROW moved from Jul'07 to Oct'12 (approx. 5 years movement)
2) Overall I-485 pre-adjudicated case down from 95K to 65K (these 65k might be just EB2-I & EB3-I only)
3) Overall I-485 Pending cases jumped from 45k to 80k (this 80k will further reduce in second half of FY'14)
4) No spikes in I-485 receipts or completions
5) No significant rise in I-485 EB3-ROW Inventory
My point here is instead of 5 yrs forwarded movement for a prolonged period of 1 year there is no significant inventory built-up and on top of it we saw 5k+ spillover to EB3-I.
Let's predict the period from Apr'14 to Mar'15:
1) We saw retrogression in PDs from Oct'12 to Apr'11 but there is no indication of EB3-ROW PD becoming Unavailable before Sep'14.
2) from above I strongly believe retrogression is a temporary and its due to anticipation of reaching the annual quota seeing the existing pending applications.
3) After Oct'14 the dates start move forward but this time we don't have 5 years of PDs to move and hence it will become current at certain time. The PERM approvals only tell us when will this happen will it happen in Q2 or Q3 of FY'15, but certainly it has to become current in FY15 and it will stay on current thereafter.
Here is my back of envelope calculation, if everything else remains the same. There could be plenty of things that can work in EB2I's favor.
First, EB2I
If PERM approval remains at ~7K/month pace, then we get 80K+PERMs for FY2015 and EB2ROW will consume most of the 40K EB2ROW GC's and any small spillovers from EB1. Rule of thumb for every 10K PERMS approved, 5K GC's will be allocated to EB2ROW. This means EB2I will get its 2.8K allocation only. So, no EB2I movement for FY15.
From FY16, I expect EB2I to get 5-10K GC's once the PERM backlog is removed.
Next EB3I
If the USCIS/CO have done proper calculation and allocation, EB3ROW should consume the rest of the 15K this year and will get to Apr 12 or near about by EOY.
Next year EB3 M P and C will get their 2.8K allocation for a total of 8.4K
EB3ROW will consume 8K GC's per year so from Apr 12 to say Dec 14 it will equal ~20K GC's
Now the rest ~11K (40K - ~20K - 8.4K) will all go to EB3I in FY15
From FY16 20K+ will be consumed by EB3I . I hinted in one of my previous posts a couple of months back that the fate of EB2C will befall on EB2I.
Now that is my analysis. Spec, we all wait for yours.
Your EB2-I estimate is too pessimistic and EB3-I estimate is too optimistic. I would take a middle ground.
Also, I would consider the following:
1) If you closely watch the EB2-ROW consumption, it has a pattern where it will consume more in one year and less in the next year.
2) When we consider PERM approvals ONLY 35 % will transform into I-485s and remaining 65% belongs to I & C which can only transform into I-140.
3) The combined total of EB2-I and EB3-I for last 4 years is at 25K per year...this will continue and will increase further from next year onwards due to EB3-ROW spillover
redwood,
Thanks for the reply.
This was the reply I penned at the time of your original post.
Since then I have looked at it a bit more, but not very comprehensively. At the outset, I must say that the figures I am working on may be (and probably are)unreliable, so please bear that in mind. This is a problem everybody has, so it is not surprising that there is a wide range in the opinions expressed.My thought (mostly guesses, rather than backed by data)
I'm finding it difficult to judge what the EB3-ROW demand actually is (and might be in the future).
I'm undecided as to whether EB3-ROW will become Current in FY2015. The number of existing cases falling through to FY2015, plus cases with a PD from October 2012 onwards might just prevent EB3-ROW becoming Current in FY2015. That said, because of processing times (both PERM and I-140/I-485), the date can be ahead of actual numbers, so it could happen. I think it will be close either way. On balance, I think there is a possibility towards the end of FY2015.
When the EB3-ROW dates move beyond 01OCT12 will depend on how many cases fall through to FY2015 and how many visas CO believes he has available for EB3-ROW in Q1 FY2015.
As EB3-I receives Fall Across, then the COD will start to move ahead faster, but there will still be a considerable underlying gap in PD between EB2-I and EB3-I for several years. It may reduce porting over time, but not eliminate it IMO. It will take at least a year for the numbers to slow, because the process has already started for the next batch and very few would become current under EB3-I even if the dates moved forward. The EB-C situation was different, since the EB3 COD was actually ahead of the EB2 COD and reverse porting has occurred.
I guess your point is that that more applications will be received in EB3-ROW as dates move forward rapidly, reducing EB2-ROW approvals and providing more Fall Across within EB2 to EB2-I.
That is an important consideration, both for Fall Across to EB3-I and for EB2-I. An increase will eventually reduce the Fall Across available to EB3-I. At the same time, it also reduces the chances of the Armageddon scenario because EB2-I would receive more Fall Across within EB2.
Looking at Trackitt figures, the density of EB3-ROW cases appears to have dropped significantly after PD 2008.
No case with a PD of later than September 2008 was approved in FY2013 according to Trackitt. Based on EB-ROW having an adjusted allocation of 27k (due to EB3-P use) in FY2014, then perhaps 8k cases might fall through into FY2015.
EB3-ROW should become Current by sometime in Q2 FY2015 at the latest. Theoretically, cases with a PD up to September 2015 would become current at some point in the FY. Exactly how many approvals that generates in FY2015 would depend on PERM processing times to a large degree, as well as I-140/I-485 processing times. Cases up to a PD in 2014 would possibly be a better approximation.
EB3-I should receive some (reasonable) Fall Across in FY2015. I could see EB3-I backlog to July 2007 being cleared by sometime in FY2017.
Forward movement for EB3-I would slow down when they reached the same Cut Off Date as EB3-P (I am not sure what COD that would be when it happened), who have a very large number of EB3 CP cases. How big the slowdown would be might be determined by the EB3-P abandonment rate (unknown).
I don't really see a situation where it would be advantageous for an EB2-I applicant to reverse port to EB3-I, although movement of EB3-I would probably reduce porting from pre July 2007 PD cases eventually.
That is a fairly simple viewpoint and does not consider the changing dynamics of applications under EB3 as the COD moves forward. Any change is likely to result in increased amounts of Fall Across to EB2-I and reduced Fall Across to EB3-I.
PS :- I would increase your assumed number of approvals for EB3-P. Due to the overall 7% calculation, they will more likely receive 5-7k per year rather than 2.8k.
In your "If the USCIS/CO have done proper calculation and allocation, EB3ROW should consume the rest of the 15K this year and will get to Apr 12 or near about by EOY." I think you meant Apr 11, or whatever the COD is set at at in September. Even then, a certain % always miss out.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
Some confirmation from Oh of what I found previously.
I don't know what their unofficial source is - possibly the same.05/29/2014: State Department Reportedly Ceased Allocating EB-3 Visa Numbers for China Since May 9, 2014
Unofficial report indicates that U.S. Department of State has ceased allocating EB-3 visa numbers for China since May 9, 2014. Accordingly, since EB-3 visa number is scheduled to retrogress to 10/01/2006 in the June Visa Bulletin, some Chinese EB-3 I-485 applicants or EB-3 immigrant visa applicants may experience delays with their pending EB-485 applications or immigrant visa applications until the EB-3 numbers move back in the uncertain time of future.
http://www.immigration-law.com/
I've also seen:
on the Chinese website http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/EB23/32118079.html.DOS has confirmed that as of 5/9/14 it stopped authorizing visa numbers for EB-3 China cases that will be impacted by the June 2014 retrogression.
Cases in which a visa number has been requested by USCIS but not authorized by DOS will be placed in a “pending” file until the priority date is current.
Last edited by Spectator; 05-29-2014 at 11:33 AM.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
from Oh Law....
http://www.immigration-law.com/
05/29/2014: State Department Reportedly Ceased Allocating EB-3 Visa Numbers for China Since May 9, 2014
Unofficial report indicates that U.S. Department of State has ceased allocating EB-3 visa numbers for China since May 9, 2014. Accordingly, since EB-3 visa number is scheduled to retrogress to 10/01/2006 in the June Visa Bulletin, some Chinese EB-3 I-485 applicants or EB-3 immigrant visa applicants may experience delays with their pending EB-485 applications or immigrant visa applications until the EB-3 numbers move back in the uncertain time of future
till what date are EB3-I folks getting medical/eval RFE's?
spec,
from your april 2010 http://travel.state.gov/content/visa...pril-2010.html bulletin faq understanding,
do you think, if july'14 eb3-row i-485 inventory shows 2k pending, will the eb3I dates move into 2k4 june ? Apr'14 inventory was showing like 7k.
do you think eb3-row inventory will build up even with dates retrogressed to apr'11.
Thanks
krishn,
I do not think there is any chance of EB3-I receiving Fall Across from EB3-WW in FY2014.
The COD for EB3-WW remained at 01OCT12 for April and May 2014 and I think the April Inventory under represented the true numbers received at that point anyway.
I don't believe EB3-WW have that many visas left for the FY within the number likely to be available to them (the exact number depends on how many EB3-Philippines can use in EB3 and stay within the overall 7% limit).
I expect EB3-WW to carry a sizable number of cases into FY2015.
If CO had any thoughts that EB3-WW would not use the visas available to them in FY2014, then he need only move the EB3-WW dates forward from the current COD of 01APR11. There should be more than enough pre-adjudicated cases up to the COD of 01OCT12 that EB3-WW reached earlier in the year to use any available visa numbers.
There is absolutely no need to move the EB3-I dates in anticipation of extra visa numbers being available within EB3 as a whole.
In the latest information from the AILA conference, the prognosis for EB3-I (according to "DOS sources") movement in the remaining VB for the FY is
That would give the sort of ending Cut Off Date for EB3-I I have always expected, given how many EB3-I approvals were made in October/November 2013.
- EB-3 India: Not more than a week at a time.
EB3-I approvals on Trackitt are slightly lower than I would have expected at this point based on historical trends, but not outside the range that might be possible.
Sorry I can't give a more optimistic reply.
PS :- Also remember that the USCIS Inventory only contains AOS cases. Consular Processed cases may account for 10-15% of the total approvals for EB3-I and EB3-ROW. In the case of EB3-C and EB3-P the figure can be as high as 50%.
Last edited by Spectator; 06-22-2014 at 02:43 PM.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
Spec:
how about the EB3ROW, giving the PERM slow down and I94 processing time, we can roughly says that eligible filers for i485 is June 2013.
giving the other fact that PERM skewed toward India and the higher or same ratio of EB2 than EB3.
what do you think EB3 ROW will perform next year?
migo79,
I don't understand your first sentence.
Generally, I think the outlook is quite bright for EB3-ROW next year.
The data is sketchy, so bear in mind that this is a semi-educated guess at best.
I expect 8-10k EB3-ROW cases to fall through to FY2015.
Demand appears to have decreased sharply after 2007 and then leveled off from 2010.
If that were to continue, EB3-might become Current towards the end of FY2015.
The high number of cases remaining at the beginning of FY2015 may slow initial progress of the Cut Off Dates due to quarterly limits. It also depends how quickly the cases have translated to demand that DOS can see.
Progress towards a Current Cut Off date can be affected if more people start filing under EB3, rather than EB2, although that will not show an instant effect.
The effect of a mass change of Category can be seen by the effect of reverse porting of Chinese applicants from EB2 to EB3. I don't believe reverse porting would be a concern for ROW, since EB2 is current, but it does show the effect that increased demand can have.
Without an irritant, there can be no pearl.
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