October Visa Bulletin

October Visa Bulletin: Rollback and Lawsuit

The past week of the Visa Bulletin has been a whirlwind. Thousands of individuals waiting in line to file for their Permanent Residence thought they had finally become eligible to file through a modernized October Visa Bulletin that the State Department released on September 9. Instead on September 25, the State Department issued a revised Bulletin that undid the changes of the original Bulletin. The consequence is that thousands of individuals, especially those in the EB-2 category with Chinese and Indian chargeability, are no longer allowed to file for Green Cards this month. Thousands of individuals with approved PERM cases and Permanent Residence eligibility are in no man’s land and uncertain as to when they will be able to file.

The rolled back filing dates on the September 25 Visa Bulletin look like this:

EB-2 China – 1/1/2013 – rolled back 17 months

EB-2 India – 7/1/2009 – rolled back 2 years

EB-3 Philippines – 1/1/2010 – rolled back 5 years

FB-1 Mexico – 4/1/1995 – rolled back 3 months

FB-3 Mexico – rolled back 17 months

The modernization of the Visa Bulletin was to include filing date eligibility alongside priority dates. Previous visa bulletins only showed the priority dates. The priority and filing dates are calculated by the available allotment of Green Cards, as there are percentage restrictions for each category (for example, 28.7% of employment-based Green Cards come from EB-1). In November 2014, President Obama announced that he and his administration were taking executive action to modernize the visa system. The Visa Bulletin released on September 9 was supposed to represent the modernized visa system.

Private attorneys have filed a class action lawsuit (Mehta v. DOS) in the Western District of Washington to prevent the filing dates from the revised Bulletin from superseding the original Bulletin’s dates. It essentially seeks to reinstate the filing dates from the original October Visa Bulletin. They have filed the complaint and appeared in court to request a Temporary Restraining Order on the revised Bulletin. A decision is expected today. Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Mike Honda represent the San Jose and Silicon Valley districts and have released press statements against the revision, encouraging the Department of State “to provide discretionary relief to those affected.” They also applaud the efforts of the class action suit.

For now, the thousands of individuals who thought they were finally eligible to file for their Green Cards will have to continue their waiting.