How to Read the Visa Bulletin: Charts, Cutoffs, and Your Priority Date

The Visa Bulletin is a one-page table published monthly by the State Department that determines when millions of people can file or finish a green card application. It is also, for a document that consequential, remarkably badly designed for the people who depend on it.

Here is how to read it, and how to work out in about a minute whether this month’s edition changes anything for you.

First: find your priority date

Everything in the bulletin is compared against a single date that belongs to you.

Employment-based cases: your priority date is the date your PERM labor certification was filed with the Department of Labor. If your category did not require PERM — EB-1A, EB-1C, and EB-2 NIW, among others — it is the date the I-140 was filed with USCIS.

Family-based cases: it is the date the I-130 was properly filed with USCIS.

You will find it printed on your I-797 approval or receipt notice. Write it down; it is the only number you need to compare against anything in the table.

Two properties worth knowing. Your priority date is portable — if you change employers or move between categories, you can generally retain the earlier date, which is why downgrading from EB-2 to EB-3 works at all. And it does not expire.

Second: find your row and column

The column is your country of chargeability, which is normally your country of birth — not your citizenship.

This trips up more people than any other feature of the system. A Canadian citizen born in India is charged to India and waits in the India line. A German citizen born in China is charged to China. Naturalising elsewhere does not change it.

The one meaningful exception is cross-chargeability: a married applicant may be able to use their spouse’s country of birth. For someone born in India or China married to someone born anywhere else, this can be worth many years, and it is regularly overlooked.

The row is your preference category — EB-1 through EB-5 for employment, F1 through F4 for family. If you are unsure which applies, our paths overview breaks each one down.

Third: work out which chart to use

The bulletin publishes two charts for each of family and employment, and using the wrong one produces either a rejected filing or a missed opportunity.

Chart A — Final Action Dates. When a visa number can actually be issued and your case approved.

Chart B — Dates for Filing. When you may submit your application.

Chart B is generally ahead of Chart A, sometimes by years. That gap is the entire point: filing early gets you into the queue and, critically, makes you eligible to apply for an employment authorization document and advance parole while you wait.

USCIS decides which chart is operative each month, separately for family-based and employment-based cases, and announces it on its adjustment of status filing charts page. The State Department publishes both; USCIS designates. Check it every month — the designation genuinely changes, and in recent bulletins employment-based applicants have frequently been directed to Chart A while family-based applicants use Chart B.

If you are going through consular processing rather than adjustment of status, this designation does not apply to you — follow the National Visa Center’s instructions instead.

Fourth: read the cell

Three things can appear where your row and column meet.

C — Current. Visa numbers are available for every priority date in that category. No waiting line. File.

A date, e.g. “01JAN14”. Only priority dates earlier than that date can proceed. If your priority date is January 1, 2014 and the chart says January 1, 2014, you are not current — the date must be later than yours.

U — Unavailable. No visa numbers at all that month, for any priority date. Nothing can be approved and nothing new can be filed in that category.

Dates are written day-month-year: 15OCT22 is October 15, 2022.

What Unavailable does not mean

This causes real distress every time it appears, so it is worth stating plainly. If a category goes Unavailable:

• Your pending I-485 is not denied or cancelled. It sits, and resumes when numbers return.
• Your EAD and advance parole remain valid on their own terms. Your work authorisation does not evaporate.
• Your priority date is unaffected. It is fixed by your underlying petition.

Unavailable is a statement about visa supply that month. It is not a decision about your case. Our visa retrogression guide covers the mechanics in full.

Why the dates move — and move backwards

Roughly 140,000 employment-based and 226,000 family-based immigrant visas are available per fiscal year, and no single country may take more than 7% of the total in a preference category.

That per-country cap, not the overall number, is what produces the India and China backlogs. It applies identically to a country of 1.4 billion people and to one of 400,000.

Two rhythms follow from this:

The fiscal year resets October 1. Categories that exhaust supply in August or September routinely return in October with dates restored. A September unavailability is usually an end-of-year condition, not a structural change.

Retrogression happens when demand outruns projection. State sets cutoff dates based on forecast demand. When more people file than expected — or when a large batch of cases becomes ready at once — the department pulls dates backwards to stay inside the statutory limit. This is most common late in the fiscal year.

Our analysis of green card wait times for Indian applicants shows what the per-country cap produces in practice.

A 60-second monthly routine

1. Open the current bulletin at travel.state.gov.
2. Check the USCIS adjustment of status filing charts page to see which chart is operative this month for your case type.
3. Find your preference category row and your country-of-birth column in that chart.
4. Compare the cell to your priority date. Later than yours means you can act; equal or earlier means keep waiting.
5. Read the notes at the bottom of the bulletin. This is the part everyone skips and it is where State telegraphs retrogression and unavailability a month or two ahead. The warnings are usually explicit.
6. Check the next month’s projection, which State often includes in the same notes.

You can shortcut steps 3 and 4 with our priority date tracker.

When your date becomes current

The window can be short. If your date is current and you have not filed:

• Have the package ready in advance. Medical exam (Form I-693), affidavit of support where applicable, civil documents, photographs.
• File promptly. A category can retrogress the following month.
• File the I-765 and I-131 concurrently with the I-485 to get work authorization and advance parole moving.
• Confirm the current form editions the day you file. USCIS rejects superseded editions, and a rejection can cost you the window entirely.

Where to read it

The official bulletin is at travel.state.gov, published roughly mid-month for the following month. The USCIS adjustment of status filing charts page publishes the chart designation shortly after.

Both are free and authoritative. Everything else, including this article, is a secondary source — always confirm the numbers against the official bulletin before you file anything.

Not legal advice. Visa Bulletin dates change monthly and can retrogress without warning. Confirm current cutoff dates and the operative chart at travel.state.gov and uscis.gov before taking any action, and consult an immigration attorney about your specific case.