The Department of State has just issued the February 2017 Visa Bulletin.  This is the fifth Visa Bulletin of Fiscal Year 2017.  This blog post analyzes this month’s Visa Bulletin.

February 2017 Visa Bulletin

Final Action Dates

Applications with these dates may be approved for their Green Card (Permanent Residency card).

Employ-
ment
based
All Charge-
ability 
Areas Except
Those Listed
CHINA-
mainland 
born
INDIA
MEXICO  
PHILIPPINES  
1st
C
C
C
C
C
2nd
C 
15NOV12
15APR08
C
C
3rd
01OCT16 
01OCT13
22MAR05 
01OCT16 
15OCT11
MU Law Analysis

All Other:  The EB-2 has been current for many years.  The EB-3 progression continues.  Consular processed EB-3 are effectively current.

China:   The China EB-2 date moved up one month. The China EB-3 date also progressed about one month.  The China EB-3 continues to have a more favorable date than EB-2, as a result of many Chinese EB-3 workers “upgrading” their applications to EB-2.

India:  EB-2 India and EB-3 India stayed virtually the same, unfortunately.  

Mexico: Mirrors All Other in all aspects.

Philippines: EB-3 moved ahead by another three months.  The Philippine EB-3 number essentially cleaned out all 2010 EB-3 visas and much of the 2011 EB-2 visas in just five months.  This is what we have expected.  (Our note from September 2016: “This is consistent with internal MU Law analysis which sees this category progressing into 2013 by the Summer of 2017.”).