Visas and the queue
Country of chargeability
Also called chargeability, chargeability area.
Country of chargeability is the foreign state against whose per country visa ceiling an applicant is counted, set by place of birth rather than by citizenship, passport or current residence, subject to four narrow exceptions.
What it decides
8 U.S.C. 1152(b) sets chargeability by "birth within such foreign state", and 22 CFR 42.12(a) states the same rule. Citizenship, passport and residence do not move it: a Chinese passport holder born in Singapore is charged to Singapore, and a British citizen born in Mumbai is charged to India. Four exceptions follow in the statute, repeated at 22 CFR 42.12(b) to (e). Three are permissive and conditional rather than automatic. A child may take either parent's state only when accompanying or following to join that parent, and only if needed to prevent the child being separated from the parent. A spouse may take the other spouse's state only if needed to prevent husband and wife being separated. A person born in a state where neither parent was born and neither parent resided at the time of the birth may take either parent's state. The fourth is mandatory: a person born in the United States is charged to the country of which they are a citizen or subject, or, holding no such status, to the last foreign country where they resided. Chargeability decides which Visa Bulletin column an EB-5 applicant reads. The per country limit is in 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(2), capping any single foreign state at 7 percent, and a dependent area at 2 percent, of the family and employment preference totals combined rather than 7 percent of each category. It is a ceiling, not an allocation: under 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(5)(A), where employment-based visas for a quarter exceed the qualified immigrants who could otherwise use them, they issue without regard to that limit for the rest of the quarter, and the fifth preference is within that rule. The employment-based chart carries separate columns only for oversubscribed states, which at the August 2026 bulletin are China-mainland born, India, Mexico and the Philippines; every other applicant reads the general column. Hong Kong has been a separate foreign state, "not as a colony or other component or dependent area of another foreign state", since fiscal year 1991 under Pub. L. 101-649, title I, section 103, a note to 8 U.S.C. 1152. A Hong Kong born applicant is therefore not charged to mainland China and reads the general column.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into country of chargeability rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Cross-chargeabilityCross-chargeability is the rule that charges an applicant's immigrant visa to a spouse's or a parent's country of birth instead of their own, so that a family facing different per-country queues is not separated.
- Per country limitThe 7 percent ceiling, in 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(2), on the family and employment preference immigrant visas that natives of any single foreign state may receive in a fiscal year. It is measured against the family and employment preference totals combined rather than against each category separately, and dependent areas get 2 percent.
- BacklogBacklog is the demand already waiting ahead of an investor in the same visa category, the same country of chargeability and, since the 2022 set-asides, the same reserved or unreserved pool, which must be worked through before a visa number reaches them.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary