The Department of State released the April 2023 visa bulletin. The visa bulletin summarizes the availability of immigrant visas both for consular processing and adjustment of status applications to be filled in April 2023. The State Department releases both the Final Action Dates and Date of Filing Applications for Employment-Based and Family-Based immigrant visas. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirms which chart Applicants must use to file their Adjustment of Status Application (AOS). Below, we break down the movement seen in the April 2023 visa bulletin.

Employment-Based Cases

In April 2023, USCIS is accepting AOS applications based on the Visa Bulletin Final Action Dates chart, rather than the Dates for Filing chart that it had been using for the past several months. A new development in the April 2023 visa bulletin, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras no longer have their own column in the final action dates and dates for filing application charts. Instead, they are all counted towards worldwide countries. This shows the demand for employment-based visas has considerably decreased.

For the employment-based first preference category (EB-1), all countries will remain current, except for India and China. For Indian and Chinese EB-1 Applicants the cutoff date remains the same as last month on February 1, 2022.

As DOS forecasted in the March 2023 visa bulletin release in the employment-based second preference category (EB-2), we see retrogression for all except Chinese applicants. Both the State Department and USCIS continue to see higher demand than the available visas under EB-2, necessitating the retrogression. The outlier, the cutoff date for Chinese applicants remains on June 8, 2019. The cutoff dates for Indian applicants were retrogressed by eight months to January 1, 2011. The cutoff date for the rest of the world was retrogressed by four months to July 1, 2022.

There was little-to-no movement in the EB-3 category in the April 2023 visa bulletin. For India, the Final Action Date remained on June 15, 2012. For China, the Final Action Date was advanced by three months, to November 8, 2018. For the rest of the world, visas continue to be immediately available in EB-3. In the March 2023 visa bulletin, the State Department forecasted the imposition of Final Action dates for EB-3 worldwide. The State Department has not repeated this warning in the April 2023 visa bulletin. However, as they are continually monitoring and adjusting Visa Bulletin cutoff dates, further retrogressions in EB-3 and EB-2 may occur.

Family-Based Cases

Similar to employment-based cases, we are seeing retrogression in Family-Based cases. For the first time in some time and as predicted in the February 2023 visa bulletin, the State Department established a final action date cut-off for the Spouses and Children of the Permanent Residents (F2A) category. All countries except Mexico have the Final Action cutoff date set to September 8, 2020. For Mexico, the Final Action Date cutoff date is set to November 1, 2018. USCIS is accepting cases based on the Date of Filing chart which continues to be current for all countries across the board, allowing applicants to continue to file their AOS applications.

For the rest of the categories, there is no movement in either the Final Action Date Chart or the Application Filing Date Chart for Family-Sponsored cases in April 2023. The dates continued to remain unchanged from the March 2022 visa bulletin. The lack of movement indicates that the U.S. embassies and consulates continue their work clearing the backlogs created by COVID-19.

We continue to monitor and report predictions and movements related to the monthly visa bulletin. If you have questions regarding your priority date, please feel free to contact us. We put our extensive experience and expertise to work for you to ensure you get the right advice.

April 2023 Visa Bulletin Visa Bulletin