The State Department has posted their Visa Bulletin for May, 2022. Small changes have been recorded in terms of family based immigration on the May bulletin, while there have been some advances in certain employment based preference categories that we will review.
In addition, the State Department has added new information to the Visa Bulletin in general, which includes new categories on the Final Action date chart as well as the Dates for Filing chart in the employment based section. Specifically, you will see new columns for the Investor Visa, which include “5th Set Aside: Rural”, “5th Set Aside: High Unemployment”, and “5th Set Aside: Infrastructure”. This corresponds to employment based visa applicants who are interested in pursuing an investor visa, and the percentage of visas that are allocated to certain types of investors. For example, some investor projects will be dedicated to infrastructure projects in the United States, while some are targeting high unemployment areas. Availability of visas is dependent upon which category you are applying in.
Employment Updates
The first major change for next month is the advancement of the EB-2 category for Indian employment visa applicants. This month (April), the final action date is July 1st, 2013. For next month, the final action date has advanced by 2 months, and will be September 1st, 2013. For (mainland) Chinese employment visa applicants, the May visa bulletin is largely the same— with EB2, EB3, and the Other Workers Category having the same final action dates as April.
There is also an update for Certain Religious Workers on the May bulletin. This month, all categories for Certain Religious Workers on the final action date chart were marked as “U” or Unavailable. However, next month all categories on the final action date chart have been changed to “C” or Current, or have received a date. For May, Certain Religious Worker applicants from Central America and Mexico now have a final action date of May 1st, 2017 and April 1st, 2020, respectively.
On the Dates for Filing chart in the employment based section, EB2 applicants from India have also received a new date. For April, the date for filing is September 1st, 2014. Next month, the new date for filing will be December 1st, 2014— i.e. an advancement of 3 months.
Diversity Visa (Green Card Lottery)
DV applicants should also be aware that the May visa bulletin posts cut-off dates for DV applicants in May and June, 2022. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see the cut-off dates in May, which correspond to the 6 geographical regions of the world where DV applicants are from (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America and the Caribbean). If you have received a number that is lower than the cutoff date listed, then you can apply for your green card.
You will notice that there are no cutoff dates listed in June—meaning that everything is marked as “Current”. If you have not received a number that is lower than the cut-off date in May, you will most likely be applying for your green card in June.
