http://www.immigration-information.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5456
Visa Bulletin answers and other isssues
06-20-2008, 12:09 PM
I posted the following in the blog section of this site earlier today:
Last week, I wrote to Charles Oppenheim of the State Department, asking several specific questions. This morning, I had a long talk with him, when he very graciously called to respond to the questions I e-mailed him earlier. In the course of our discussion, I learned a great deal about the present backlog situation and what is being done about it. First, let me deal with the questions I had asked.
Mr. Oppenheim explained that while the Visa Office initially took the view that visa numbers had to fall down into employment third preference before the could fall across to the individual country quotas, but after further review, additional legislation, and consultation with Congress, they concluded that they have to allocate the fall across within individual preference petitions first.
With respect to the issuance of more than 81 % of the total quota in the first three quarters of the fiscal year, he explained that this resulted from information provided by the CIS. At the end of the day, the result of the early allocation of visa numbers did not any real harm. Those visas would have been allocated by the end of September anyway. What he told me, however, was most interesting.
He said that the CIS asked for substantially larger allocations each month due to anticipated higher denial rates. The historic AOS denial rate is approximately 22%. Based on their review of pending cases, the CIS said that they believed that their denial rate would be approximately 50%. For this reason, they requested larger allocations of blocks of visa numbers so that they could pull larger numbers of files. As it turned out, the denial rate was lower than anticipated so a larger number of visas got used. Mr. Oppenheim observed that the CIS seemed to be adjudicating more recently filed cases. It is unknown as to whether the sample batch of files from which the CIS determined that there would be a likely 50% denial rate was a small sample, a group of older cases, or something else.
The “other worker” visa availability issue is a non-issue. There are only a handful of EB3 visas left in the quota. Because this number is so small, they have made the category “unavailable” for July. Within the “other worker” sub-category, there is a small group of applicants (fewer than 200) with priority dates earlier than the one shown in the Visa Bulletin. The cutoff date was established to help manage this small group.
Mr. Oppenheim did confirm my understanding that the NVC and overseas posts only issue appointment dates when they have a reserved visa number in hand for the applicant.
Based on what I learned in this conversation, it appears that there are at best a few hundred EB3 visa numbers left for this fiscal year. It is highly unlikely that a cutoff date will be shown for EB3 before October, though it is still possible.
I learned a few other facts that are most interesting. Indian applicants make up approximately 40 to 45 per cent of the entire employment based quota backlog (those who have filed and those waiting to file). Chinese applicants are about half that number. Mexico has a large and growing percentage of the EB3 backlog.
The CIS backlog does not appear to be as serious as I had been told previously. Rather than 600,000 pending employment based AOS cases, it is likely less than 400,000 pending cases. Also, according to Mr. Oppenheim, the CIS has “made remarkable strides to improve their processing” of AOS cases. Hopefully, this will translate into sustained higher productivity. He also said that the CIS is moving closer to accepting the idea that they need to begin processing their AOS cases the way the NVC handles consular cases. That is, process them in increments rather than waiting until the last minute and trying to do everything at once. My own feeling is that if the CIS does make this change, it will make life easier for everyone and provide far greater predictability for case completion dates.