On September 22, 2010, Charles Oppenheim of the Department of State’s (DOS) Visa Office met with the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (AILA) DC Chapter, where he discussed the Visa Bulletin, family- and employment-based priority dates, and other issues.

Among other things, AILA reported Mr. Oppenheim as noting that many EB‐3 beneficiaries from India and China are now eligible for and applying under the EB‐2 category. He said that he does not expect priority dates in the EB‐3 category for Indian and Chinese nationals to advance at a pace greater than that experienced during fiscal year (FY) 2010.

According to AILA, Mr. Oppenheim made the following short‐term predictions about the employment‐based priority dates:

EB‐2 and EB‐3, China. These two categories are expected to move slowly over the next few months, by one or two weeks at a time.

EB‐2, India. This category is expected to remain unchanged or to move very slowly forward, by a week or so. This is mainly a result of EB‐3 Indian applicants (approximately 60,000 cases pending) “porting” their priority dates into the EB‐2 category and thus using visa numbers, he said.

EB‐3, India. Similarly, this category is expected to move very slowly over the next few months, perhaps by one or two weeks at a time.

EB‐3, Rest of World (ROW). This category is expected to move slightly forward or to remain unchanged in the November 2010 Visa Bulletin due to the high number of applications waiting for a visa number in this category.

E‐4, Special Immigrant Religious Workers, may have cut-off dates by the end of this year.

EW has such a small number of visas (5,000 per year) that it will advance very slowly. As with those in the EB‐3 category, many of these cases are at the District Offices, so Mr. Oppenheim does not know the numbers until after moving the cut‐off date forward.

AILA reported that Mr. Oppenheim also said, among other things, that under AC21, EB‐1 China/India cases are not currently subject to the per-country limit, because of the crossover in that category of otherwise unused numbers from other countries. This has allowed 5,000‐6,000 visa numbers to be allocated to the India and China EB‐1 categories when approximately 2,800 would be the normal limit. The remaining unused EB‐1 numbers “fall down” into the EB‐2 categories, which has allowed approximately 20,000 EB‐2 numbers for India and nearly 6,500 for China. The availability of these numbers “fall across” strictly in priority date order, not by country, Mr. Oppenheim noted.

The November 2010 Visa Bulletin is available at the following link:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_5172.html.

Almost on a daily basis we get calls from our clients about the process for allocating visas. I always tell a humerous anecdote about my discussions with Mr. Charles Oppenheim at the DOS who is the “knower of all things” about visa allocations.

In connection with the notification that all employment-based visas had been allocated for FY2009, Mr. Oppenheim, Chief, Immigrant Control and Reporting Division Visa Services Office, provided the following background explaining how the Department of State allocates visas through its Immigrant Visa Allocation Management System (IVAMS):

USCIS submits requests for visa authorizations if all required case processing has been completed (e.g., interview [if required], all clearances received, etc.). Therefore, once the authorization has been granted the case would be adjusted immediately, and could be forwarded to the “green card” processing facility. If the case is not within the established cut-off date the request goes into our “pending” demand file, which also contains the demand which has been received from our overseas posts. That demand is then used as the basis for the establishment of future cut-off dates.

When a USCIS authorization is made from the “pending” demand file an e-mail message is sent to a single address which each CIS Office has provided to the Immigrant Control and Reporting Division. The first page(s) of the message provides a summary listing of the A-numbers which have been authorized, and the following pages contain an individual authorization page for each A-number. That listing would be the same type as received if the case had been authorized when the USCIS Officer had originally submitted the request. Such authorizations are assumed to have been processed to conclusion during the month of authorization. If not, USCIS must notify VO that the case was not processed, the case record would then be deleted, and the case would be resubmitted to VO once the reasons for the deletion have been resolved.

If the Officer believes that a case should have been authorized, but has not received such notification, the program which is used to submit requests has a feature for checking on the status of individual A-numbers.

The authorizations from the “pending” demand file are sent to a central address to ensure that they are seen by someone should the officer who originally requested the case not be there (e.g., reassigned, on leave, etc.). If authorization is immediately available at the time of request the response would be send to the requesting officer, not the central address.