Hello, everybody, In this video, we'll talk about the April 2021 visa bulletin.
There have been some really good movements, both in the family categories and the employment-based
categories. So, we'll go over that. And also, I mentioned some predictions. Specifically,
as embassies and consulates are reopening, we'll talk about what that means for the visa bulletin,
and how it's going to impact your case. So, let's jump right in.
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immigration journey less stressful. My name is Jacob Sapochnik, and I am an immigration
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April 2021 visa bulletin was finally released a few days ago. And remember in the past few months,
the visa bulletin has always been released further in the month, almost at the end of
each month. This seems to be quite common under the Trump administration where we
really had no idea when the visa bulletin will come out. It was very difficult for people to
plan. This is one of the first times that we have the visa bulletin come out so early in the month,
just like in the old days. And it's really amazing news because not only it helps us with planning,
but also it allows people to predict what will happen when their visas are going to
become current. So, let's talk about April 2021 visa bulletin. We've seen some pretty
good movement in the F4 category, specifically for the Philippines, more than a month movement,
as well as in the F3 category, in the family petition [inaudible] the F3 category in the
family section. On the employment-based side, we've seen a very good movement in the EB1
category. Specifically for India, there's been an advance of eight months, and now, the EB1 category
is current for all, which has been a while since we've seen that. So, somebody's got exciting
news there. I'm going to go through the different charts, and we'll talk about some of the movements
on the different dates. And also, at the end of the video, I'm going to try to give you
some predictions as to what's going to happen as consulates and embassies are reopening,
how it's going to impact the visa moment, and how it's going to impact your cases.
If you're inside the United States, we predict that USCIS will continue to use the final action
dates for all employment cases. F2A is also final action dates or other family categories
will continue to use the dates for filing for now. Let's start with the family chart. So,
if we look at the family petition chart, you see it on the screen right now.
You can see that the F1 category for all countries moved by 16 days. It's now on October 8, 2014,
China moved to October 8, 2014, a 16 days move forward. India also moved 16 days forward
to October 8, 2014. The same for Mexico. Mexico is on February 22, 1988, also 14 days movement,
and the Philippines is on January 22, 2012, also 14-day movement. There's no change on
the F2A category final action dates. F2A is still current. If you look at F2B, all chargeability,
there's a movement of 17 days forward to August 8, 2015. China, also 17 days forward to
August 8, 2015. India is the same, August 8, 2015, and Mexico is on July 22, 1999,
seven days movement forward, and the Philippines is on September 1, 2011, 17 days forward. On F3,
all chargeability of the world is moved seven days forward to August 8, 2008.
China moved seven days to August 8, 2008. Same with India seven days forward. Mexico moved 16
days to October 1, 1986, and the Philippines moved 24 days to April 1, 2002. F4 is the category we
see the most movement. All chargeability of the world, 10 days forward. China, 10 days forward
to November 1, 2006. India moves 17 days, April 8, 2005, Mexico moved seven days,
July 22, 1998, and the Philippines, April 8, 2002, one month forward and seven days,
this is huge on the final action dates. You can look real quick at the date of filing.
If you look at category F1, we've seen one month and seven days moving all chargeability. China
moved by one month, and seven days to the 15th of September 2015. India also moved by
one month and seven days. No change for Mexico, and the Philippines moved 10 months and 10 days
in the F1 category to September 1, 2013. This has been a really good movement to the date of filing
chart. Remember, date of filing chart is the date when you can actually submit your Adjustment of
Status or your cases to the NVC. Your priority date obviously should be before this date.
So, if you look at F2A, we've got a one-month advance all over the world, it's the same.
F2B moved a little bit, 24 days in all chargeability. 24 days in China, June 15, 2016.
And we've seen a big movement, big movements in Mexico, July 8, 2000, 6 months and 17 days,
and the Philippines we've seen six months and 33 days on F2B to November 8, 2012. These
are amazing, amazing movements, F3 and F4, not too many changes on the date for filing chart,
except for the Philippines, which again, moved by three months and 24 days. So, overall, on
the family side, we've definitely seen some good movement there, specifically in countries like the
Philippines, we've seen some really good movement. And now, let's take a look at the
employment-based side. We've definitely had some exciting news over there. On the employment side,
on the final action dates, you can see that EB1 is current for all countries. It's current for India,
it's current for China, it's current for Mexico, and the Philippines. And we've seen some really,
really good movement in that area. So, let's jump in and look at the final action dates
for employment categories. So, if you look at the first category,
it’s current, it’s current for the rest of the world. China, India, Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam,
El Salvador, Guatemala, it's all current EB1. This is great news for people that are going to
become current. On April 1, they're going to be able to file for the green cards and start their
NVC process happening. If compared to last month, this is an eight months jump both for China, and
for India to bring them to current. If you look at the second preference, no change, it’s current
for the rest of the world. We see that China is on September 1, 2016, that's a one-month and 17 days
jump. India is at the first of May 2000, then that's three months jump and 17 days. The rest,
Mexico and the Philippines are current, no change. So, these are the main jumps. On the employment
side for the final action dates. If you look at the dates of filing, we don't see too many changes
from last month, except for EB2 for China, there's a movement of three months forward. And EB3 for
China, we've got a movement of two months forward, which is really good news for China and India
overall in this visa bulletin update because, definitely, we've seen some forward movement,
specifically for those two countries. As you can see, we've seen quite a significant movement,
especially in the employment-based categories. Specifically on the EB1 category, but we predict
that in the next few months, we're going to see even more movement. And on the family side, we've
also seen some movement. Now, why is it happening? You remember in previous videos, I mentioned that
there's going to be a spill-over of visas from the family categories to the employment. Remember,
before the Proclamation 10014 was lifted, there were quite a few visa categories that couldn't
get visas, couldn't come. Those visas were not used and they were spillover. They’re
moved over to the employment-based side so we can see definitely a big push in many,
many of these categories that are getting those visas. Now, that the proclamation has been lifted,
embassies and consulates are going to start moving pretty actively, just scheduling appointments,
getting people their visas, and we're going to start seeing more balance on the family side
as well. We're going to see more movement on the family visa categories as well. We expect to see
more movement on categories. Even more progress on the F4 categories, has been stuck for a while.
You're going to see more movement on F2A categories, people are moving to the United States
that were stuck overseas and couldn't come here, and a few other categories. So, we're
definitely going to see some more of that. And specifically, as I mentioned in previous videos,
embassies and consulates are reopening right now. They're working hard to start scheduling
individual embassies for more staffing, more space to see people that are going to help us
move more interviews forward. There are going to be visas that are yet to be scheduled.
And we hope that with the current changes that we see coming from the State Department, with
the Biden administration pushing forward on the State Department to start scheduling interviews,
to start being more creative as to how they are going to be processing people, we're going to see
definitely more movement on the visa bulletins. Also, for May, and for June, to see more movement
on family categories, and big surprises in employment-based categories, moving forward.
I don't expect to see any retrogression anytime soon. But we're going to see definitely more
movement. I'm predicting even more movement in the EB2 categories. Specifically, for countries like
India and China. I can tell you what I see now in my office when it comes to straight correlation
where we see in the visa bulletin is that NVC is slowly starting to send emails to applicants.
Specifically, since the proclamation was lifted, we can see emails are being sent to let people
know that their cases are now being forwarded to embassies, this is going to be happening more. And
we hope that NVC is going to be able to streamline the process and start moving more cases,
start releasing more cases from the backlog and start sending them to the respective embassies to
schedule them for interviews. So, instead, we're going to start seeing more movement,
specifically on the employment side, but also slowly on the family side, as interviews are
going to start being scheduled as NVC is going to start releasing cases to embassies,
and we're going to start seeing more flow in the next year with interviews being scheduled
and visas are being adjudicated once again. Hopefully, this information was helpful.
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