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

March 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 
15DEC12
01JUN08
C
C
3rd
01DEC16 
15MAR14
22MAR05 
01DEC16 
15MAR12
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 date progressed nearly six months!  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 6 weeks, while EB-3 India stayed 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 all 2010 and 2011 EB-3 visas in less than 6 months 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.”).  

____

The Visa Bulletin also included projections for the next several months of Visa Bulletins.

EMPLOYMENT-based categories (potential monthlymovement) 


EB-1:   The category will remain “Current”.
China and India: A Final Action Date is likelyto be imposed by August. 
(MU Law note: this is not unusual and happens most years.  This should not concern anyone.) 
EB-2:
   Worldwide:  Current
   China:         Up to fiveweeks.
   India:          Up toone month.  
EB-3:
   Worldwide:  Up to three months. 
   China:         Up to sixmonths.
   India:         Extremely limited forward movement.
   Mexico:        Will remainat the worldwide date.
   Philippines:  Up to six months.