EB Visa Bulletin History & Trends
Employment-based Final Action Dates move month to month as the State Department manages green card demand against annual limits: they can advance quickly, creep forward, hold steady, or even retrogress backward. Tracking that movement over time shows whether a category and country are speeding up or stalling. This page charts the last 18 months of movement by category and country.
Seventeen months of employment-based Final Action Date movement, charted by category and country — pick a category, choose the countries you care about, and watch how the cutoffs actually moved.
Final Action Date trend
Choose one EB category and one or more countries. Each line shows how that cutoff moved across the last 18 monthly bulletins. A rising line means the date advanced; a falling line means it retrogressed. "Current" and "Unavailable" appear in their own bands, never as a date.
Lines overlap when countries share the same cutoff. In most EB categories, Mexico, the Philippines, and all other countries track the same worldwide date — so their lines sit exactly on top of one another. Only China and India usually have separate, later cutoffs; select just those two to see the gap clearly.
This page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Past movement does not predict future movement. Always confirm dates against the official Visa Bulletin, which controls. For advice about your individual case, consult a licensed immigration attorney or accredited representative.
Trend data is being verified and will appear here soon.
What the last 18 months actually show
The verified window now runs from May 2025 through October 2026. The October bulletin changes 15 of the 50 employment-based category-and-country cells. Several cutoffs advance, EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India reopen after three Unavailable months, and some worldwide cutoffs retrogress. The new fiscal year does not move every category in the same direction.
EB-2 for Mexico, the Philippines, and all other countries returns to a dated cutoff. Those rows were Current in September and carry a Final Action Date of 1 January 2025 in October. A Current period is therefore not permanent. The chart shows this as a status transition rather than a measurable number of days of retrogression.
China and India follow different paths within the same preference category. EB-1 China remains at 1 July 2023 in October, while India advances from 15 October 2022 to 1 February 2023. EB-2 China advances one month to 1 October 2021; EB-2 India changes from Unavailable to 1 November 2013. EB-3 India remains at 1 January 2014 while China advances seven days to 8 January 2022. Category labels alone cannot establish which cutoff is later for a particular country.
The EB-3 rows contain both advances and retrogressions. Mexico and all other countries move backward from 1 September 2024 to 15 May 2024 in the main EB-3 row, while the Philippines advances to 15 August 2023. In Other Workers, Mexico and all other countries move backward to 1 January 2022, China advances to 1 October 2019, and the Philippines advances to 1 January 2022.
Unavailable months remain part of the historical record. EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India were Unavailable from July through September 2026. October restores cutoffs of 1 November 2013 and 1 December 2023 respectively. These are changes in availability, not day-based advances from a date. EB-4 and Certain Religious Workers remain at 15 December 2022 across all countries, and the three EB-5 set-aside rows remain Current.
This chart describes what each bulletin published. It does not predict future movement or the timing of an individual approval. It tracks Final Action Dates; USCIS separately requires Dates for Filing for October 2026 employment-based AOS filings. Consult the official USCIS filing instruction for that separate question.
What to do next
For a direct yes/no on your own priority date against the latest month, use the Priority Date Calculator. To see every category and country for the current bulletin in one place, open the Visa Bulletin Tracker, and to project a rough remaining wait, try the Green Card Wait Time Estimator. For a plain-English read of the newest bulletin, see our October 2026 Visa Bulletin analysis, and for the mechanics behind the charts, our guide on how the Visa Bulletin works.
Frequently asked questions
Each line traces the Final Action Date cutoff for one employment-based category and country across the last 18 monthly Visa Bulletins. A line rising over time means the cutoff is advancing and the wait is moving forward; a line falling means retrogression. Current and Unavailable months are shown in their own bands rather than as dates.
Current ('C') is drawn in a band above the date axis, because it means no backlog at all — a better state than any specific cutoff date. Unavailable ('U') is drawn in a band below the axis, because it means no numbers are being issued that month. We never plot C or U as a date, and the connecting line turns dashed across a status change so it is never mistaken for smooth movement.
Every data point is taken from the official U.S. Department of State Visa Bulletin for that month and checked by hand against the published Final Action Dates table. We keep the record append-only — past months are never rewritten — so the history reflects what each bulletin actually said when it was released.
No. A cutoff that advanced quickly for several months can stall or move backward without warning, especially late in the government fiscal year. These charts describe what has already happened; they are not a forecast, and we do not predict where any date will go next.
No. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Always confirm dates against the official Visa Bulletin, which controls, and consult a licensed immigration attorney or accredited representative about your individual case.
Sources
- U.S. Department of State — Visa Bulletin — the official monthly source for every Final Action Date in these charts; it always controls.
- USCIS — Adjustment of Status Filing Charts — official page where USCIS designates which chart applies to Adjustment of Status each month.