How to Read the Visa Bulletin: A Plain-Language Guide

Byjenny@well.com

Every month on or around the 10th, the US Department of State publishes the Visa Bulletin — a sparse PDF with grids of dates that determine when millions of people can take the next step toward a green card. For most people in a backlog, checking this document each month is a ritual that will go on for years, often decades. For most people reading it for the first time, nothing on the page is obviously meaningful.

This post explains what the Visa Bulletin actually tells you, how to find your spot in it, what “priority date current” really means, and the common patterns in how the dates move month to month.

Why the Visa Bulletin exists

The US issues a fixed number of green cards each year in most categories. When demand exceeds that supply, the system creates a line. The Visa Bulletin is how the government tells you where the front of the line is right now.

Specifically, the Bulletin applies to:

  • Family-Based preference categories (F1, F2A, F2B, F3, F4)
  • Employment-Based preference categories (EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-4, EB-5)
  • Diversity Visa case numbers (a separate section)

Immediate Relatives of US citizens — spouses, minor children, and parents — are not subject to numerical limits, so they do not appear in the Visa Bulletin. If you’re in an IR category, the Bulletin is not relevant to your case.

The two tables you need

The Visa Bulletin has two main sections for each immigration track (family and employment):

Chart A: Final Action Dates. These are the priority dates that can actually receive a green card right now. If your priority date is before the Chart A date for your category and country, your case is “current” and can be approved and the visa issued.

Chart B: Dates for Filing. These are typically earlier (further back in time) than Chart A. They tell you when you can start preparing your adjustment of status application or begin assembling documents at the National Visa Center, even though the final visa isn’t yet available.

The practical difference matters:

  • If only Chart A is reached for your date, your green card can be issued now.
  • If only Chart B is reached, you can start the paperwork and send it in, but you’ll wait for Chart A to catch up before approval.
  • If neither is reached, you wait.

Which chart applies to you? USCIS announces each month whether applicants adjusting status in the US should use Chart A or Chart B. For consular processing abroad, the National Visa Center typically uses Chart B for pre-interview preparation and Chart A for actual visa issuance.

Finding your spot

Every applicant in a backlogged category has three pieces of information that locate them in the Bulletin:

1. Your preference category. This is what family relationship or employment classification you fall under. F2A, EB-2, F4, EB-3, and so on.

2. Your country of chargeability. Usually your country of birth, not your country of citizenship. There are exceptions (cross-chargeability through a spouse’s country of birth, for example), but your country of birth is the default.

3. Your priority date. This is the date US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received your I-130 or I-140 petition — or, for cases that went through PERM, the date the PERM labor certification was filed with the Department of Labor.

Find the row for your preference category and the column for your country of chargeability. The date in that cell is the cutoff.

  • If your priority date is earlier than the cutoff date, your date is “current.” You can proceed to the next step.
  • If your priority date is the same as or later than the cutoff date, you wait for the cutoff to move past your date.

A concrete example

Let’s say your I-130 was filed on March 15, 2018. You were born in Mexico. The petition was filed by your US citizen sibling, so you’re in F4.

You open the Visa Bulletin and look at Chart A. The F4 row for Mexico shows a date of, say, “01JAN00” — meaning January 1, 2000.

Your priority date (March 15, 2018) is years after January 1, 2000. You wait.

A year later, the F4 Mexico Chart A date reads “15JAN00.” It has moved forward 14 days in a year. At that rate, your date — March 15, 2018 — will become current roughly 475 years from now.

This is not a joke. F4 Mexico has had periods where the cutoff moved by weeks per year, in a line that was always growing faster than it was shrinking. It is one of the longest backlogs in US immigration.

How the dates move

The Visa Bulletin dates move based on supply and demand. Each category and country combination has its own supply (the share of annual visas allocated to it) and its own demand (people with priority dates in that bucket waiting for a visa).

When demand is low or supply increases, the cutoff dates move forward quickly. During a hypothetical period of low demand, F2A for all countries might advance by several months each Bulletin.

When demand is high or supply decreases, the cutoff dates move forward slowly, stall, or move backward (“retrogress”).

Retrogression is when the cutoff date actually moves backward from one month to the next. For example, a cutoff of January 2017 one month, then October 2016 the next. This happens when demand suddenly exceeds the pace of visa issuance — often near the end of a fiscal year when annual allocations have been nearly exhausted, or at the start of a fiscal year as cases carry forward from the prior year.

“Current” status means the Bulletin shows “C” instead of a date. Everyone in that category and country combination can proceed. F2A was current for a notable stretch in recent years when supply ran ahead of demand.

“Unavailable” or “U” means no visas are available in that category and country right now. This happens occasionally when a category has been fully allocated for the fiscal year.

What a priority date actually is

Your priority date is set when the first petition in your immigration path is filed:

  • For family-based petitions, it’s the date USCIS received the I-130.
  • For employment-based petitions without PERM (EB-1 categories, EB-2 NIW), it’s the date USCIS received the I-140.
  • For employment-based petitions requiring PERM (standard EB-2, EB-3), it’s the date the Department of Labor received the PERM filing (Form ETA-9089).
  • For employment-based petitions requiring NVC action but no PERM, the priority date is set at I-140 filing.

Keeping your priority date: In most cases, if an approved petition is later withdrawn or revoked for reasons other than fraud, you can “port” the priority date to a new petition in certain circumstances. This is particularly important for applicants whose petitioning employer closes, who switch employers, or who have multiple petitions filed in parallel.

Example of priority date portability: A worker’s employer files an EB-2 petition in 2015 that is approved. The employer later goes out of business. A new employer files a new EB-3 petition in 2020. If structured correctly, the worker can “keep” the 2015 priority date on the new petition.

The country-of-chargeability trick

Your country of birth usually determines your column in the Bulletin, but there’s one important exception: cross-chargeability through a spouse.

If you and your spouse were born in different countries, and one country has a significantly longer wait than the other, you can “charge” to the country with the shorter wait if both of you are immigrating together.

Example: You were born in India, your spouse was born in Mexico, and you’re the principal beneficiary of an EB-3 petition. India has a very long EB-3 wait; Mexico has a short one. You can cross-charge to Mexico and process together under the Mexico cutoff dates.

This saves many years for some mixed-nationality couples. It requires that both spouses are in the US process together — one spouse can’t cross-charge to their partner’s country of birth if the partner isn’t also immigrating.

Children born in a country different from both parents can also sometimes be used, though less commonly.

The crossover: when EB-3 is faster than EB-2

For much of the last decade, India and China nationals have faced the strategic question of whether to pursue EB-2 or EB-3, because the Visa Bulletin cutoffs for the two categories have sometimes crossed — meaning EB-3 was actually faster than EB-2 for those countries.

When this happens, applicants with approved EB-2 petitions can file a new EB-3 petition using the same PERM and I-140 position, keep their EB-2 priority date, and use whichever category is current for I-485 filing.

This is why serious long-term planners for India and China cases track the Visa Bulletin so closely — the right strategic move can change month to month.

Reading the Diversity Visa section

The last page of each Visa Bulletin covers the Diversity Visa program for the current fiscal year. This section works differently.

Each selected DV applicant receives a case number at the time of selection. The DV section of the Bulletin shows which case numbers are being processed in the current month, by region.

Case numbers are structured like 2026AF00012345 — year, region, serial number. The Visa Bulletin typically shows advancement by region (AFRICA, ASIA, EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS), OCEANIA, SOUTH AMERICA/CARIBBEAN) with cutoff case numbers for each.

If your case number is below the cutoff for your region, your case is “current” — you can process. If above, you wait.

The DV program operates on a strict fiscal year (October through September), so cases must process within that year or lose eligibility. Later case numbers for the fiscal year often don’t process at all before the September 30 cutoff.

Common Visa Bulletin mistakes

Confusing visa validity with “visa available.” The Visa Bulletin doesn’t tell you how long you can stay in the US. It tells you whether an immigrant visa is available for someone with your priority date.

Watching your category but not your country. The India EB-2 date and the “All Chargeability Areas” EB-2 date can be a decade apart. You need the specific country column.

Reading Chart B as if it’s Chart A. Chart B lets you prepare paperwork; Chart A is required for actual visa issuance. Many applicants have expected approval when only Chart B was reached.

Not knowing the USCIS announcement. Each month, USCIS announces which chart adjustment-of-status applicants can use for that month. The announcement is separate from the Bulletin itself and often arrives a day or two after the Bulletin publishes.

Assuming forward movement is permanent. Retrogression is real. A date that was “current” one month can disappear the next.

Confusing priority date with approval date. Priority date is set when the first petition is filed. Approval of the I-130 or I-140 is a separate event that often takes 6 months to a year or more.

Treating “current” as an approval. “Current” means your priority date is reached — you can proceed. It doesn’t mean your green card is issued or your application is approved. Those come after the applicable I-485 or consular processing is adjudicated.

Checking the Visa Bulletin

The Visa Bulletin is published at travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin.html.

The USCIS announcement of which chart adjustment applicants may use for the current month is published at the USCIS Visa Bulletin page, typically a day or two after the State Department publishes the Bulletin itself.

Beware of third-party sites that reproduce the Bulletin — they’re usually accurate, but the primary source is the State Department’s own page.

Where this fits

The Visa Bulletin determines the timeline for every family preference and employment-based preference case. If you’re in any of these categories, understanding how to read it is foundational:

The Bulletin itself is small, sparse, and unassuming. For millions of people, it is the most important government document they will read every month for years. The patience it demands is one of the hardest things about the US immigration system — and the clearer you can read it, the fewer surprises you’ll have along the way.

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