The State Department has released their December, 2021 Visa bulletin for immigrants seeking family based and employment based visa to come to the United States. For next month, consular processing for family based visas has not changed significantly, however the F2A category has advanced from June 1st, 2021 to September 1st on the dates for filing chart. This means that new applicants who have a priority date on or before September 1st will now be able to file for an adjustment of status (AOS).
In terms of employment based visas, the State Department has made several advances for the month of December for different classes of visas. This means that in some consular sections, backlogs have been reduced. For example, India’s EB2 category has advanced six months from December 2011 to May, 2012.
In addition, China has seen their Other Worker category, part of the EB3 program, advance by nearly 2 years in terms of final action dates. This means the State Department has freed up several visa numbers in this category for Chinese applicants per the county quota. China has also advanced by 6 months in their EB2 category, meaning that applicants waiting to file an adjustment of status in this category have had their priority date bumped significantly.
Other final action backlogs remain for applicants from Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador) applying for a Religious Workers visa to come to the United States.
For more information and to see the full December bulletin, click on the following link: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2022/visa-bulletin-for-december-2021.html.
