Link to this months bulletin: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2021/visa-bulletin-for-september-2021.html
The State Department has released their visa bulletin for September, 2021. This month, we are seeing that family based immigration largely remains the same in terms of backlogs for certain country applicants, while spouses and children of permanent residents continue to have a current filing date (F2A category). The Biden administration made a promise early in its tenure to create non-immigrant visas for family members waiting for permanent resident visas, but this has still not happened.
In terms of the employment based categories and corresponding visas allocated to different classes of immigrants, we will take a closer look at some of the changes for the month of September.
Employment Based Visas
First off, for the month of September we are seeing many “Current” categories for final action dates across the board. This means there are green cards available for many different types of immigrants applying for employment based visas, with some categories beginning to be oversubscribed as we near the end of the fiscal year.
For example, applicants from Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) have a current final action date in all categories except for Certain Special Immigrants and Religious workers. There is currently a backlog in the above two categories for those who didn’t have an approved petition before March, 2019. In addition, applicants from Mexico who are applying in the 4th employment preference category, and certain religious workers category, have a backlog if they didn’t have an approved petition before March, 2020.
Indian and Chinese national applicants continue to see oversubscribed categories in the 2nd, 3rd, and Other Workers employment categories while every other employment based category has a Current final action date.
Certain Special Immigrants
Interestingly, for the month of September, the Certain Special Immigrant program remains current for all country applicants except for Mexican applicants and other Central American applicants (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador). This is the category that Afghan nationals would qualify for if they are trying to pursue a SIV—Special Immigrant Visa.
It shows that the current issue with regard to the crisis in Afghanistan has less to do with the quota of available visas in this category, and more so to do with the issue of actually trying to file for this type of visa as the current crisis unfolds.
Investor Visa Program
Finally, perhaps one more interesting characteristic of the September visa bulletin is the fact that applicants from around the world have a “Current” final action date for the investor visa program in the United States except for Chinese (mainland) nationals. Currently, this category is oversubscribed for Chinese applicants and those who have successfully filed a petition before November 22nd, 2015 have a final action date available.
