Visas and the queue

Date for Filing

A Date for Filing is a cut-off date on the Dates for Filing Applications chart of the monthly Visa Bulletin: an adjustment applicant whose priority date falls before it may lodge Form I-485, but only in a month when USCIS has designated that chart, and it never authorizes approval of the application.

What it decides

The bulletin publishes two charts for each preference category, Application Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing Applications, and the filing chart is normally the more permissive of the two, standing further forward in time. It is not automatically the one that counts. USCIS says the default is Final Action Dates unless its Adjustment of Status Filing Charts page says otherwise, that it designates a chart within one week of the bulletin, and that it designates separately for family sponsored and for employment based filings rather than category by category. Even in a filing-chart month, a category may use the Final Action chart where that chart is current or its cut-off stands later. For August 2026 USCIS required all employment based categories to use Final Action Dates, on which unreserved EB-5 for India is unauthorized, so no Indian unreserved investor could lodge Form I-485 that month whatever the filing chart showed. The State Department uses the same chart for a different purpose, to decide when the National Visa Center asks a consular applicant for documents.

Governed by USCIS, Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin, last reviewed 3 August 2026, for the one-week designation practice, the carve-out where Final Action is current or later, and the August 2026 designation of Final Action Dates for all employment based preference categories; USCIS, Visa Availability and Priority Dates, last reviewed 24 January 2025, for the default rule and for the National Visa Center use of the filing chart; the August 2026 employment based chart reproduced on the USCIS page When to File Your Adjustment of Status Application, which shows 5th Unreserved for India as U; 8 CFR 245.1(g)(1), which makes an immediately available immigrant visa a condition of adjustment and directs that the current Visa Bulletin be consulted, but which predates the two-chart system and does not mention it. The Visa Bulletin itself is cited without a link because travel.state.gov answers any automated request with a 5,489 byte block page.

Related terms

Dates for FilingDates for Filing is the more permissive of the two cutoff charts in each monthly Visa Bulletin, and its date is normally later than the matching Final Action Dates cutoff, so it opens paperwork earlier in the queue than a visa number is actually ready. For Form I-485 it applies only in the months and categories USCIS designates; the State Department uses it separately to decide when the National Visa Center asks a consular applicant for documents.
Final Action DateA final action date, shown in the Department of State Visa Bulletin as an Application Final Action Date, is the cut-off at which an immigrant visa may actually be issued or an adjustment of status approved for a given preference category and country of chargeability.
Visa BulletinThe Visa Bulletin is the monthly Department of State publication that reports, by preference category and country of chargeability, which priority dates have reached the front of the immigrant visa queue.
Priority dateA priority date is the date USCIS properly receives a complete, signed and paid Form I-526 or I-526E, and it fixes the investor's place in the visa queue for their country of chargeability and their EB-5 category.
Adjustment of statusAdjustment of status is the process under 8 U.S.C. 1255 by which someone already in the United States becomes a permanent resident without leaving, on Form I-485, instead of collecting an immigrant visa at a consulate abroad. An EB-5 investor who adjusts is granted conditional permanent residence for two years, the same status a consular applicant receives on admission.

Checked against primary sources on 10 August 2026. Back to the glossary