The State Department has published their Visa Bulletin for March, 2022. This month, we are seeing little changes in the family based categories; F2A remains current for a final action date. There is some progress in March for certain employment based visa applicants, as well as some retrogression. We will cover these changes below.
Employment Based Immigration
Under the first chart of the month for March, 2022, we have the final action dates for various employment based immigrant categories. Remember that final action date refers to the date that the State Department is expected to have reached a final decision on your visa application. Dates for filing refers to when a visa applicant can submit their paperwork to a respective U.S consulate.
The first update for the month of March is that in the “Other Workers” category for Chinese visa applicants, the final action date has advanced by one month. The current final action date has been changed to May 1st, 2012. If you have a priority date earlier than the one mentioned in this chart, your visa might be getting issued soon.
As we continue along the same final action date chart in the employment based immigration category, we also notice that there is a “U” which stands for “Unavailable” in the Certain Religious Workers category. The “U” refers to the fact that all of the visas have been used up already this fiscal year. It is possible for the State Department to add more visas to a category at a later point in the year, but nothing has been finalized yet.
The State Department has also noted that Certain Special Immigrants Category (4th preference) has retrogressed for Central American applicants (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala). This is also in terms of final action dates. You’ll notice that in the February visa bulletin, the final action date for 4th preference workers in the final action date chart was March, 2019. The final action date has now retrogressed to May, 2017.
On the dates for filing chart in the employment section, we have almost no changes between February and March, except for one major one. This is the fact that for Certain Religious Workers from Central America, the date for filing a visa application has changed significantly. In February, we noted that applicants who have a priority date before May, 2019 may file their visa application. For this months bulletin, applicants who have a priority date before June, 2017 may file their visa application.
Investor Visa
The investor visa, which is the last category in the employment-based charts, has also become unavailable. As mentioned above, this refers to the fact that there are no more visas in this category for the current fiscal year. This in reference to the I5 and R5 row in the final action date chart.
