Hello, everybody. In this video, I'm going to provide an overview based on a live Q&A with
the State Department where Charlie Oppenheim, the chief of the visa control unit, provided
predictions for the end of the fiscal year 2021. Also predictions for the fiscal year 2022.
And a lot of good things that you need to know as you're going through the immigration process,
whether you're applying for an immigrant visa based on a family petition,
or employment. So we're gonna dive in, break it down for you,
step by step. So what are you waiting for? I will see you on the other side.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to our immigration channel. This is a place where we get
the most up-to-date immigration news, immigration updates, and everything else that you need to make
your immigration journey less stressful. My name is Jacob Sapochnick, and I'm an immigration
attorney located in San Diego, California. And we are very familiar with all issues connected with
the State Department, Visa processing. We have clients all over the world, we are super excited
to bring you this update. In this video, we're going to go through a summary of the Q&A session
that Charlie Oppenheim has every month, the chief of the visa control unit that determines
which priority is going to be current every month. And if the visible will retrogress,
which happened in previous years. So let's jump right into the questions. Are you
concerned with the anticipated large amount of the unused fiscal year 2021
employment-based numbers? This is a very common question that was raised in this live stream,
and also is all over the place, people are worried about what's going to happen with these
unused visas. And this is what the State Department had to say about it.
The State Department said that they are extremely concerned with the amount of unused visas under
the employment-based category for the fiscal year 2021. That's why they made China and India current
in quite a few categories back in April, just to be able to help with the amount of unused visas
that were already predicted back in April. And of course, the aggressive movement since April,
in final action dates numbers is also geared towards trying to address this problem of unused
visas. And as you know, both the State Department and USCIS are going to do whatever they can,
with the amount left right now until the end of the year to maximize the number of immigrant
visas before the end of the fiscal year. In fact, based on a recent discussion between USCIS and the
State Department, USCIS is going to approve more Adjustment of Status cases by the end of this year
than they've ever done before since the fiscal year 2005. In fact, the State Department
concluded by saying that their embassies and consulates only started working normally in April
of 2021. Before that was almost zero movements. So it just shows you that with these issues,
and USCIS trying to catch up, they're doing their best to try to avoid the loss of so
many visas. And of course, there's litigation right now on the other side to try to force them
to do their job. A common question that was presented is the following. When I look at
the chart listing the final action dates, how do I know if my case is eligible to be scheduled for an
interview at the overseas post responsible for processing my case? Very, very common question
that we get asked all the time, and people are posting about it in our comments, is people are
confused as to when they know that they're ready to be scheduled for an interview. And this is
what the State Department has to say about it. The first thing is that it's super important to
finish all your obligations to the National Visa Center, upload all your documents, and make sure
that they don't need anything. So your case can be officially classified as documentary qualified.
It's important for this to be done on time because cases are being reported to the visa office as
completed on the first of each month. And so if you're documentary qualified, and your priority
is earlier than indicated on the visa bulletin, then your case is now ready to be scheduled for
an interview. Now, remember, as I mentioned in previous videos, even if that's the case,
the National Visa Center is down with your case and you are essentially sitting there in line
waiting to be processed for an interview. Now what needs to be happening is that the
US Embassy on the other side needs to stand the National Visa Center. And notice letting him
know that they have slots open for an interview. They will do that about 30 days before they're
ready to interview people. And so the National Visa Center has enough time to take your case
and send it to the respective post. The problem is that currently, embassies are not releasing
slots enough. Not enough slots are available for the National Visa Center to be sending your case
to that embassy. So while are you documentary qualified, while your priority date is current?
You still have to wait for that embassy to open the required slots for your case to be sent
over there to be scheduled for an interview. And that's what they're working on right now
to make sure that it's going to happen correctly. Now let's see what Charlie has to say about
the following question. Why hasn't the E2B final action date been advancing each month?
Actually, the India EB2 has been advancing at a rapid pace through July, as have most
of the employment categories, it's important to remember that the movement of the various
states is subject to the amount of numbers available for use each month. And the demand
is often in the weekly grouping. So sometimes, we may have a targeted amount of numbers we would
like to make use of, but the weekly grouping prevents us from advancing the date fast.
There's typically a high concentration of applicant demand in the India weekly groupings,
as I said, which can limit the movement, especially later in the fiscal year as we start to
approach the annual limits. And the same principle is, you know, applied to the final action dates,
all of the final action dates. 1 Sometimes there's a high concentration
of applicant demand in countries like India, which can cause a limited movement, especially later in
the year. And they're definitely trying to address this issue as they're working on ways to deal
with anything to do with the annual limits on immigrant visas. Here's another very important
question. If we were to assume that the fiscal year 2022 employment base annual limit
will be at least as high as the fiscal year 2021.
Will there also be a significant amount of unused numbers as there will be this year?
It's a really good question. And it's important to hear it from the State Department and to see what
Charlie has to say about this, and specifically a prediction for us for the fiscal year 2022.
That is a very hard question to answer at this point. One of the primary reasons for there
being such a large amount of unused fiscal 2021 numbers is the continued impact of the
COVID-19 issues which have impacted processing. If that impact were to continue to subside
during fiscal 2022. It can be expected that the employment number use totals
will increase dramatically and reduce any potential amount of unused numbers. But it's also
always important to remember that just because there are more numbers available for use,
doesn't automatically guarantee that we'll be able to have a correspondence,
increasing number use. If there's because a lot of things such as staffing to handle such workload
have to be considered. Just because we get more numbers doesn't mean that there are additional
staffing and resources to process such cases 1 As you can see, to prevent that from happening in
2022. There may be some need to do some corrective actions like retrogression, where essentially,
dates are moving backwards to allow more movement and adjustments. And probably retrogression will
happen in 2022. Based on Charlie's current predictions. An important question that a
lot of people are asking, and people who are concerned about retrogression in the fiscal year
2022. Why can't you advance the filing date for F2B category family-based categories for people
in the US should be given equal treatment as the employment-based categories. So what the statement
had to say about this is very interesting. They're saying that they're very advanced in most of the
family preference categories to the point where the amount of documentary qualified applicants
exceeds the annual limit in every single family-based category. For example, if the F2A
category with the limit is 87,000, for the fiscal year 2021, there are currently 130,000 documentary
qualified applicants, which exceeds the actual limit of 87,000. The same problem exists in other
family categories this year. And so the prediction is just like Charlie Oppenheim and having said
that, if this continues with such discrepancy numbers, they will have to retrogress
most family categories by two to four months, or even more to be able to catch up with the demand.
So the conclusion is that we're going to be faced with retrogression for family base numbers over a
period of time to be able to catch up. So prepare yourself for some retrogression in the fiscal year
2022. Once again, hopefully, this information was helpful. We try to do our best to provide
you with a summary of all these live streams. We also have a full blog report with more questions
linked in the description of this video. So make sure you go through that and read that as well.
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