The Department of Statehas just issued the December 2023 Visa Bulletin,which is the third of the 2024 US fiscal year. This blog post analyzes this month’s Visa Bulletin.

Visa Bulletin

Table A:Final Action Dates — Applications with these dates may be approved for theirGreen Card (Permanent Residency card) or Immigrant Visa appointment.

Employment-
based

All Chargeability 
Areas Except
Those Listed

CHINA-
mainland 
born

INDIA

MEXICO

PHILIPPINES

1st

C

15FEB22

01JAN17

C

C

2nd

15JUL22

22OCT19

01JAN12

15JUL22

15JUL22

3rd

01DEC21

22JAN20

01MAY12

01DEC21

01DEC21

Table B: Dates of Filing

The USCIS is expected touse the Table B Dates of Filing chart for I-485 employment-based filings. See: USCIS Visa Bulletin Dates

MU Law Analysis

Thiswas an uneventful Visa Bulletin.   EB-2and EB-3 Final Action Dates for China each advanced three weeks to October 22,2019 (EB-2) and January 22, 2020 (EB-3). The Final Action Dates for allremaining employment-based categories remain as they were in November.

Aswe said last month, MU Law believes that the State Department is actingconservatively, which while frustrating, may prove to ratchet down the anxietyaround the monthly chart, and provide a better measure of processing times forthose involved. While no one likes a nearly two-year EB-3 retrogression fornon-India and China, it may prove to be a stable set of dates.  We do expect these categories to slowlyprogress throughout the fiscal year pushing into 2022, and perhaps even into2023.