a4. Green Card Schedule Clearance Guide
Green Card Schedule Clearance Guide: How to Understand the US Visa Dashboard?
The "Visa Bulletin" released monthly by the US State Department is the most concerning barometer of the queue for all green card applicants. If immigration to the United States is compared to a mega concert of "limited flow", the visa sign is the official monthly updated "admission ticket rules".
How to understand this complex system? We can use the simplest language to break down those dry official terms.
1、 Core concept: Ticket in hand and entry rules
The immigration system in the United States is a queue game of "total quantity control". In this queuing system, there are several core concepts at the lowest level:
·Preference System: US law categorizes immigrants into two main types. The first category is relatives' immigration without quota restrictions (such as spouses, parents, and minor children of US citizens, who can come and go without queuing); The second category is the quota restricted category, also known as the "priority system", which includes family immigration (F1 to F4) and occupational immigration (EB-1 to EB-5).
·Quota&Per Country Cap: Congress legislates to set a fixed annual global total for each category in the priority system (for example, the basic quota for occupational immigration is 140000 per year). At the same time, in order to prevent a certain country from monopolizing the quota, a "country limit" of 7% has been set. Because the number of applicants from Chinese Mainland and India is extremely large, the 7% quota is not enough, which has caused a serious "traffic jam", which is often referred to as "retrogression".
·Priority Date (PD): This is the date you 'bought the ticket', which is your queue number in the queue. If the category you are applying for requires a Labor Permit (PERM), then the day the Labor Bureau receives the application is your PD; if you are directly submitting the I-140 or I-526 category, then the day the Immigration Bureau receives the application is your PD.
·Cut off Date: This is the official "entry deadline" drawn on the visa board every month.
·Current (abbreviated as C) means "no schedule". Equivalent to a wide open security checkpoint, anyone who buys a ticket can enter directly without having to queue outside.
2、 Dual track system: coordination between Chart A and Chart B
There are usually two tables on the visa board: Chart A and Chart B. Continuing to use concerts as an analogy:
1. Table A (Final Action Dates): Security checkpoint call numbers
This is the date that truly determines whether you can obtain a green card. The official loudspeaker shouted: "Today, only people whose ticket purchase date is before December 1, 2021 are allowed to pass through security and enter the main venue to obtain a green card!" If your PD is earlier than this date, your green card can be truly approved; If it's later than this date, you'll have to continue waiting outside.
2. Table B (Dates for Filing): Put people into the lobby to collect the form
This is the date that allows you to enter the preparation area in advance. The official loudspeaker shouted, "People with ticket dates before June 1, 2022 can enter the outer hall first, fill out forms, submit materials, and wait
What do these two forms mean for the applicant?
For applicants who submit I-485 adjustment of status in the United States, Form B is a significant advantage. After the monthly visa bulletin board is released, the immigration department will state within a few days whether the use of Form B is allowed for this month.
If the immigration office allows the use of Form B, as long as your PD is on the date of Form B, even if Form A is not yet your turn, you can submit the I-485 application in advance. Once successfully submitted, you are equivalent to obtaining a "semi free status": not only do you have a legal waiting status in the United States, but you can also apply for an EAD and an AP at the same time, no longer subject to the restrictions of H-1B or F-1 visas.
For applicants who go through overseas consular procedures, the National Visa Center (NVC) will also notify you in advance of the payment and preparation of notarized documents based on the progress of Form B. However, in the end, if you go to the consulate for an interview and obtain your immigration visa, you still need to wait for the priority date of Form A to be approved.
3、 Who is manipulating the 'magical pace' of scheduling?
The advancement and regression of scheduling dates are never uniform. This is mainly because the US State Department and Immigration Bureau are constantly adjusting based on the "supply and demand relationship".
·The reason for the Great Leap Forward: October every year marks the beginning of the new fiscal year, and a large number of new quotas are released. Or when the official finds that the materials in the warehouse are not sufficient for review, in order to "urge the submission of materials", they will push the deadline forward sharply, attracting everyone to submit as soon as possible.
·The reason for the major setback: As the deadline was relaxed, a large number of applicants gathered to submit their materials. The immigration bureau counted the inventory and found that the quota for the next two years has already been filled with the materials received in the past few months. In order to prevent others from continuing to submit materials and to give themselves time to digest inventory, the official had to forcefully push back the deadline, even displaying "unavailable (U)" directly.
4、 Key Policy: At what age is a child considered over age?
In order to prevent accompanying children from losing their eligibility for green cards due to exceeding the age of 21 during a long waiting period, the United States has the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) to help "lock in age".
It should be noted that the calculation rules for lock age have been tightened in recent years. According to the latest policy regulations, regardless of whether within or outside the United States, the "visa availability days" used by CSPA to calculate age must strictly follow Chart A.
This means that even if the immigration office allows you to submit I-485 in advance using the faster Form B, if Form A has not yet been arranged for you, your child's actual age is still increasing. The child's age can only be officially locked on the day when Table A truly approves your priority date. For families with older children, it is necessary to calculate time more accurately.
5、 General portrait of professional immigrants from Chinese Mainland in the past decade
·EB-1 (Outstanding Talent/Executive): No scheduling required in the past years. But with the surge in the number of applicants, there has been a normalized scheduling of around 2 to 3 years in recent years.
·EB-2 (high education/NIW): Belongs to a heavily affected area with long-term backlog. The current actual waiting time is generally around 4 to 5.5 years.
·EB-3 (Technical/Professional): Due to differences in application thresholds and quota digestion speed, it often experiences a "reversal" with EB-2 (i.e. EB-3 is actually faster than EB-2). The current actual waiting time is around 4.5 years.
·EB-5 (Investment Immigration):
Old law projects: The backlog is the heaviest, and applicants who submitted earlier are currently facing a long wait of 8 to 10 years.
The new law project (reserved quota after the 2022 RIA new policy): In the previous years, it enjoyed a golden dividend period of no schedule and the ability to "double submit". But with the saturation of application volume, high unemployment rate projects have taken the lead in scheduling, and the dividend period for rural projects is gradually tightening.
6、 Overtaking tactics to seize favorable scheduling
If you want to legally go faster in a long schedule, you can make reasonable use of the following rules:
1. Multiple head approach (PD inheritance): The immigration rules in the United States allow for the inheritance of priority dates for previously approved applications. For example, if you previously applied for EB-2 and received a queue number, a few years later your skills improved and you met the faster EB-1 criteria. When you submit an EB-1 application, you can apply to directly transfer the previous EB-2 priority date and instantly complete the "overtaking" in the new queue.
If both spouses meet the conditions for applying for a green card, they should independently file the application as the main applicant. In this way, there is dual insurance, where whoever's schedule arrives first or whose one is approved first can be directly bound as a co applicant, and the whole family can obtain a green card together.
3. Cross border crossing (cross charging method) - The strongest legal cheat green card scheduling depends on your place of birth, not your passport nationality. If your spouse (born in Chinese Mainland, with a long schedule) is born in a country or region that does not need a schedule (such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, Canada, etc.), then when submitting I-485 or going through consular procedures, you can explicitly declare to the official that "Cross Charging Capability" is required. In this way, the whole family (including you as the main applicant) can directly borrow the spouse's "no need for scheduling" international channel quota, directly exempt from scheduling, and quickly obtain a green card.
This article is provided by the law firm of Zhang Daqin in Los Angeles (www.visatopia. com).
