Buenos dias, buen dia, buenas tardes.
Good morning. Good day. Good evening. My name is Parviz Malakouti.
I am an immigration lawyer and i'm going to show you in this video how to read the US visa bulletin.
The Visa Bulletin is used to determine how long the relatives of green card holders and US citizens have to wait before a visa is
made available to them. In short, it's just kind of like a waiting list. So let's get right into it. First of all,
we go to google and we are going to find the most recent Visa Bulletin available.
Today's date is February 26
2019. We already have the march visa bulletin available to us. So we're going to click on March.
This takes us to the Department of State website and
here's a lot of text and a lot of charts here. We want to focus on the charts in section 4a and 4b.
okay, so
we have to determine which of these two charts that we are going to use.
So the way we do that is we go to the last paragraph in section 4B.
It says "visit
uscis.gov/visabulletin. info for information on whether
USCIS has determined that this chart can be used in lieu of the chart and paragraph 4A"
this month for filing applications for adjustment of status with the USCIS."
Click on that link.
This is going to take us to the
USCIS website and
we're going to go down to next month's
adjustment of status filing charts. It says: "For family sponsored filings, you must use
the 'dates for filing' chart in the Department of State Visa Bulletin for March 2019."
The "dates for
filing chart." Let's go back to the Visa Bulletin and
Here we have the "dates for filing" chart date for filing family sponsored visa applications.
So for today, we're going to use the chart 4B. So this is the chart as I mentioned before
There are many charts and for the the charts in 4A and 4B,
the framework is the same if you look at it here, but the dates
Included are different. Okay, I'm not going to go into
why we use one chart or the other in any given month in THIS video, however
If you want more information on that check out my video on the Visa Bulletin.
Anyway getting back to this document...
Now we need to know how to read this. So first of all, if you see at the top of each column,
starting from left to right we have the words "family sponsored."
Then we have "All chargeability areas except those listed"and then we have four countries
listed: China, India, Mexico, Philippines.
So first of all, "family sponsored" so the codes underneath these words "family sponsored", each
correspond to a different relationship between the beneficiary and the
petitioner. So in an I-130 petition for alien relative,
which is the first step that someone takes to bring their relative over for a green card,
the petitioner is the US citizen OR the green card holder, that's filing the application
on behalf of their relative. The person who's looking to GET the green card, to come over,
the relative, is known as the
BENEFICIARY. Okay, so we need to find out
what the relationship is between the petitioner and the beneficiary and we also need to find out what country the
beneficiary is from, which is
Why we deal with these
columns over here.
Beneficiaries from China, India, Mexico and Philippines each get their own column with their own dates.
Then there's this category which is "all chargeability areas except those listed."
This is what we call "the rest of the world "category because
anybody from any country, any beneficiary from any country, other than these four countries China, India,
Mexico and Philippines has to use this column. They all get lumped into the same column.
So a person from France, a person from Iceland,
from Brazil, a person from Japan, they all use the "all chargeability areas except those listed."
Now, I have a sample
I-797
Notice of action and we're going to bring up this sample so we can take a look at two important pieces of information.
One is the priority date and the other is the notice type. We're going to use this
document, this notice of action as a sample so we can try to read the Visa Bulletin
with actually an example of a
a petition that's been filed. First of all the notice type says "approval notice
Section brother or sister of US citizen." So by reading this we know that this notice of action
corresponds to a petition that was filed on behalf of a brother or sister of a U.S. citizen so that gives us the relationship
Let's go back to the Visa Bulletin. Okay now which one of these
Family sponsored categories is a brother or sister of a U.S. citizen?
Well, there's no way of knowing just by looking at this chart, right? Because these are just codes
Okay, so we need to find out which code to use. For that, we come up to here, this
heading which says family sponsored preferences, and I'm going to skip right to the answer.
Fourth - F4 for brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens.
So we're going to come back down to our chart at 4. So that's what we're going to that's the family sponsored category that
we're going to use for our sample, and
now we're going to take a look at these dates.
These are obviously dates 22Jun2006 that refers to the 22nd of June
2006. This is known as the "cut-off date." The cutoff date. What this date means is that people
who have a have filed their application, their petition for alien relative,
BEFORE this date
now have a visa available to them. So people who have filed their I-130
before this date
now have a visa available to them. So how long is it taking for...a
brother from France. I use France because we're going to use The All chargeability areas listed [column]. So
the way we calculate that is very simple:We take the difference in time between this
this cutoff date and
today's date. So today's date is February 26,
2019. This cutoff date is June 22nd
2006. The difference in time is roughly twelve years and eight months. So right now,
brother or sister [of a U.S. citizen] that is from France that is waiting for a green card
has to wait roughly twelve years and eight months. How about China?
How about a brother or sister that lives in China? Well this you see here. There's the same date:
22Jun2006 so somebody who is a brother sister from China has to also wait roughly 12 years and eight months.
How about India? India is even longer. For
India, the brother sister would have to wait 13 years. For Mexico, the brother or sister would have to wait
20 years and three months. Again,
that's just [calculated] by measuring that the difference in time between, THIS date November 8th
November 8th 1998 and today's date February 26 2019. What about the Philippines?
A brother a sister from the Philippines would have to wait roughly
21 years and 1 month.
Ok, so that's it. That's how you read the US visa bulletin.
We're going to take this this example one step further and we're going to just take a look at the priority date.
Okay. So the priority date in this sample is the date that we use, okay.
So, this is our date this date. This priority date is October 28th,
2010.
So we're going to compare the priority date in THAT sample
petition, with the cutoff date in the Visa Bulletin.
So...if
this
petition was filed for somebody from France,
you can see that the visas are not available yet for people
Who filed on June 22nd 2006 or later.
Well, we filed in October of 2010. So there's still about a four year
wait, if it's a brother or sister from France. Same thing with China.
If we filed for somebody for a brother or sister from India,
and we're using that same petition with the priority date of
October 28th, 2010
Well, unfortunately, the brother/sister from India has to wait for five years a little bit over five years.
How about Mexico?
How much time is between November of 1998 and October of
2010 - about 12 years, unfortunately. So the Mexican brother or sister, hermano, hermana...
they have to wait about 12 more years, unfortunately. How about the Philippines?
January 1998 to October
201. That person, that brother sister has to wait (unfortunately )about 13 years.
Okay, so that's it. That's how you read the the U.S. visa bulletin for family based petitions.
I hope this this video was useful for you
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