The Department of State’s Visa Office releases its statistics on demand and how it determines monthly Employment Preference Cut-Off dates:

How it works:  Each month, the Visa Office subdivides the annual preference and foreign state limitations specified by the INA into monthly allotments based on totals of documentarily qualified immigrant visa applicants reported at consular posts and CIS Offices, grouped by foreign state chargeability, preference category, and priority date. If there are sufficient numbers in a particular category to satisfy all reported documentarily qualified demand, the category is considered “Current.” For example: If the monthly allocation target is 3,000 and there is only demand for 1,000 applicants, the category will be “Current”.

Whenever the total of documentarily qualified applicants in a category exceeds the supply of numbers available for allotment for the particular month, the category is considered to be “oversubscribed” and a visa availability cut-off date is established. The cut-off date is the priority date of the first documentarily qualified applicant who could not be accommodated for a visa number. For example: If the monthly target is 3,000 and there is demand for 8,000 applicants, then it would be necessary to establish a cut-off date so that only 3,000 numbers would be allocated. In this case, the cut-off would be the priority date of the 3,001st applicant.

*The provisions of the Chinese Student Protection Act require that the China annual limit be reduced by 1,000. A total of 300 numbers are deducted from the E3 category, and 700 from the E5 category.

**The EW category is currently entitled to no more than 5,000 of this total.

Unused numbers can “fall-down” from E1 to E2 to E3. Unused numbers can “fall-up” from E4 and E5 to E1. This is taken into consideration when setting monthly/annual targets for number use based on historical/recent patterns. 

Notes:  The imposition of cut-off dates for some categories/countries has limited the amount of applicants who have been able to file for adjustment of status with USCIS, and such applicants would not be included in the above totals.  In addition, new applicants are constantly becoming eligible for processing in categories for which cut­off dates do not apply, or for a category other than that which they initially filed for status.  Therefore, the above totals should not be interpreted to reflect the total universe of applicant demand. These totals only represent the amount of demand which was taken into consideration during the determination of new dates.

– All totals are approximate data values as of April 8, 2013

This information was provided courtesy of AILA (The American Immigration Lawyers Association).

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Alka Bahal is a Partner and the Co-Chair of the Corporate Immigration Practice of Fox Rothschild LLP.  Alka is situated in Fox Rothschild’s Roseland, New Jersey office though she practices throughout the United States and at Consulates worldwide. You can reach Alka at (973) 994-7800, or abahal@foxrothschild.com.