I don’t think the Oct 2005 is that important for EB2. After all, NIW applicants are only a small portion of EB2. Majority EB2 in the world are through Labor Certification. The reason of the rapid forward movement of employment-based (EB2) immigrant visa numbers is that the cases in Backlog center were not processed as fast as originally prediction. There are still more than 250000 cases pending in BEC. These cases are supposed to be released by the end of the Sept, 2007.
Let’s do a simple estimation:
150000 cases will be approved (60%)
37500 cases will be EB2 ( around 25% of 150000)
Assumed Dependent factor is 2
They will consume total 75000 visa number.
The total EB2 in 2005 is 43412
(data from http://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY05tableV.pdf). The total EB visa number is more than 240000 in 2005. however, the total number is around 150000 for 2006 and 2007.
This is true threat of the forward movement EB2.
The driver of the forward movement of EB2 won’t last long since the 2006 fiscal year is only three years left. DOS won’t worry about the possible waste of the visa number at the beginning of the 2007 fiscal year.
I guess DOS will set-up cut-off date for all countries. The retrogression should be around 2 years