infoUS State Department announced its August 2008 Visa Bulletin recently and it came with both good news and bad news:The good news is all Employment Based 2nd Preference for all countries remains “Current” with the exceptions of China and India which both sprang forward substantially to “June 1, 2006″ from their last month’s “Jan. 1, 2003,” or almost 3 and a half year leap forward. 

That is a good movement in the right direction for many EB-2 workers from these two countries with an approved I-140 with a priority date before this latest cut-off date because now they can proceed to file the I-485 right away without any further delay to avoid possible retrogression problems that might happen next few months, as the anticipated rush of filing their new applications accumulated during or with a priority date between Jan. 2, 2003 and Jun. 1, 2006 starts pouring in on Aug. 1, 2008!Speaking of retrogression, here’s the bad news: all EB-3 cases are now “Unavailable” for both the “Skilled Workers” and the “Other Workers” which actually had a cut-off date of Jan. 1, 2003 from the last month’s visa bulletin announcement.  Even though it would not make that much a difference, it is definitely a terible regression in the opposite direction!  This is very bad news for most of the elementary school teachers in our clientele because many of them are in this EB-3 category.  We can only hope Congress will work out some sort of a compromise to re-allocate those leftover numbers from the other preferences so that the future months ahead will see substantial improvement.On a related note, there are no suprises or dramatic changes in all family based preferences.Click here to see the actual “Visa Bulletin” for August 2008.If you have any questions or would like to discuss your case with our attorneys, please send your inquiry or comments to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and our experienced staff will get back to you with our response.Thank you.

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