US warns EB-1 green cards may shut for India

The United States has warned that employment-based first-preference green cards for Indians could become unavailable within weeks because of heavy demand, adding fresh pressure to an already severe backlog that has left another major category closed to Indian applicants.

The State Department, in its September Visa Bulletin, said high demand and use of EB-1 immigrant visa numbers by applicants chargeable to India could exhaust the country's allocation before the US fiscal year ends on September 30.

"High demand and number use by aliens chargeable to India in the EB-1 visa category may necessitate making the category unavailable in the coming weeks if India's pro-rated limit in the EB-1 category is reached before the fiscal year ends," the State Department said.

“This situation will be continually monitored, and any necessary adjustments will be made accordingly,” it said.

EB-1 is the employment-based first-preference category, covering priority workers including people with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers and certain multinational executives and managers.

The warning is particularly significant for Indians because several other employment-based green-card queues are already severely constrained.

For September, the EB-1 India final action date is October 15, 2022.

That means an Indian applicant generally must have a priority date earlier than the listed cutoff for a visa number to be available for final action, subject to other eligibility requirements.

India's EB-2 category, which covers professionals holding advanced degrees and people of exceptional ability, is listed as “U” -- unavailable -- in the September bulletin.

The State Department defines “U” as meaning visa numbers are not authorised for issuance in that category during the period concerned.

EB-2 India was already unavailable in August and remains so in September.

The backlog is also stark in the employment-based third-preference category.

The EB-3 India final action date for September is January 1, 2014, meaning the queue stretches back more than 12 years.

For comparison, EB-3 is September 1, 2024 for most countries not separately listed in the bulletin, January 1, 2022 for mainland China and August 1, 2023 for the Philippines.

India's unreserved EB-5 investor category is also unavailable for final action in September, although the EB-5 set-aside categories for rural projects, high-unemployment areas and infrastructure remain current for all countries.

The filing dates offer somewhat more room than the final-action dates.

For India, the September dates-for-filing chart lists December 1, 2023 for EB-1, January 15, 2015 for EB-2 and January 15, 2015 for EB-3.

Applicants seeking adjustment of status inside the United States, however, must check which chart US Citizenship and Immigration Services authorises for use in a particular month.

The pressure on Indian employment-based applicants stems in large part from the combination of heavy demand and statutory limits on the number of employment-based immigrant visas available each year.

For fiscal 2026, the State Department says the worldwide employment-based preference limit is 186,317. US immigration law also generally imposes a 7 per cent per-country limit across family- and employment-based preference visas, although carryover provisions affect the final calculations.