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

April 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 
15JAN13
22JUN08
C
C
3rd
15FEB17 
15AUG14
24MAR05 
15FEB17 
15SEP12
MU Law Analysis

All Other:  The EB-2 has been current for many years.  The EB-3 progression continues, moving an additional two months.  Consular processed EB-3 are effectively current.

China:   The China EB-2 date again moved up one month. The China EB-3 again date progressed nearly six months, just as it did in the March 217 Visa Bulletin.  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 moved up about 3 weeks, while EB-3 India stayed essentially the same, unfortunately.  

Mexico: Mirrors All Other in all aspects.

Philippines: EB-3 moved ahead by nearly six more months.  The Philippine EB-3 number essentially cleaned out most of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 EB-3 visas in less than 6  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.”).