Employment-based immigration is about to be withdrawn again. Is this really the case?

Employment-based immigration is about to be withdrawn again. Is this really true? (Lawyer Huang Huili) The State Council also stated that all available EB-1 quotas for FY2012 are...

(Lawyer Huang Huili) The State Council also stated that all available EB-1 quotas for FY2012 will be fully used, so there are no excess quotas for EB-2. In a meeting on January 19, 2012, State Department official Charlie Oppenheim discussed the forecast for the next few months. Here is the relevant content: Starting from FY-2012 (October 1, 2011), employment-based immigration quotas have not been used very much. The State Department has accelerated immigration processing in the past few months, mainly to see how many applicants are still waiting for immigration processing. Oppenheim estimates that the number of EB-1 applicants this year will be about 1,000 less than last year, and it is estimated that about 12,000 places will be allocated to EB-2. However, due to the increase in the number of EB-5 investment immigration applicants, the remaining EB-5 places that can be allocated to EB-2 will also decrease. Currently, about 85% to 90% of all applications for employment-based immigration quotas are obtained through applying for I-485, and the remaining 10% to 15% are obtained through overseas visa interviews at embassies and consulates. The employment-based immigration waiting list is forecast as follows: The State Council estimates that the employment-based immigration waiting list will still be improving in March 2012, and may be advanced by up to 6 months. Since the processing time of I-485 by the Immigration Bureau is about 4 to 6 months, the I-485 filed in March may be approved before FY2012 (September 30, 2011). Therefore, Mr. Oppenheim said that after the release of the March schedule, the April and immigration schedules may be stagnant until this summer, and the immigration schedule will be adjusted based on the use of employment immigration quotas this summer.

Since Mr. Oppenheim currently does not have enough data, he has not yet predicted the employment immigration schedule for the last quarter of FY-2012 (July 1, 2012 to September 30, 2012). Mr. Oppenheim, the State Department official in charge of immigration scheduling, stated at a meeting of the American Immigration Lawyers Association on March 16, 2012 that in the immigration scheduling of May or June 2012, the second priority for employment-based immigrants born in mainland China and India will be greatly regressed to around August 2007. Since the State Council predicts that the EB-2 immigration waiting list will be greatly regressed from May to June, we remind applicants who have arrived but have not yet submitted their documents to hurry up and apply.