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2. October Visa Bulletin: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
On September 6, the State Department released the much-anticipated October 2007 Visa Bulletin.
The Visa Bulletin lists the backlogs in applying for permanent residence for persons in the family-based, employment-based and lottery-based categories. If your place in line ("priority date") is before the date listed in the Visa Bulletin, you can apply for a green card.
For some persons, the October Visa Bulletin allows them to apply for adjustment of status to permanent resident immediately. For others, the line is long, but not insurmountable. For many others, the waiting times show no signs of abating, and may even be getting worse.
* The Good
The October Visa Bulletin provides some good news for persons in the family-based categories: "During recent months the cut-off dates in several of the Worldwide Family preference categories have moved very quickly. It is expected that such cut-off date movement will continue during the first quarter of fiscal year 2008. Should the level of demand begin to increase at a significant rate, it may be necessary to slow or stop such movements at some point later in the fiscal year."
There is also good news for persons in most of the employment-based (EB) categories: The Visa Bulletin contains no backlogs for EB-1 priority workers, for EB-2 advanced degree workers (except for those born in China and India), for EB-4 special immigrants and for EB-5 investors.
* The Bad
The worldwide EB-3 category for professionals with bachelor's degrees and skilled workers has retrogressed to August 1, 2002, over a five-year wait. This is bad news for computer, business and healthcare professionals and their employers although if the workers are presently in H-1B status, many of them can extend their status past the six-year maximum.
The EB-3 unskilled workers category is now backlogged six years, bad news for nannies and their employers.
* The Ugly
For persons born in India and China, many of whom have been waiting in line for many years, the priority dates are moving in the wrong direction. It now takes longer for a university-degreed computer programmer from India, China or Mexico to obtain a green card than it does for an unskilled worker.
Hospitals seeking help in coping with the nurse shortage are out-of-luck. Not only are there very few temporary visas available for registered nurses, despite being designated by the Labor Department as a shortage occupation, the wait to become a permanent resident ranges from five years and two months to six and one-half years.
Unless Congress steps up to the plate and reforms the legal immigration system, our economy will be damaged significantly over the next few years.
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