Visas and the queue
Final Action Date
Also called final action, FAD, cut-off date, Application Final Action Dates.
A 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.
What it decides
A visa is available when the priority date is earlier than the final action date shown for that category and country, and State allocates numbers in the chronological order of priority dates under 8 U.S.C. 1153(e)(1) and 22 CFR 42.51(b). Adjustment of status turns on two separate tests. 8 CFR 245.1(g)(1) governs whether a visa is available at the time Form I-485 is filed, treating a visa as available for accepting and processing once the priority date is earlier than the date shown. Approval requires that a visa be available again when USCIS acts, and at that second stage only the Final Action Dates chart counts, as USCIS Policy Manual Volume 7, Part A, Chapter 6 puts it: a visa must be available both at the time an applicant files Form I-485 and at the time USCIS approves the application. Clearing the Dates for Filing date therefore permits filing rather than approval, though a pending I-485 does carry eligibility for employment authorization and advance parole. Consular issuance is governed by the final action date, because numbers are allocated for use in connection with issuance under 22 CFR 42.51(b). For EB-5 the bulletin runs separate final action dates for the unreserved category and for each of the three set-asides under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(I), rural at 20 percent, high unemployment at 10 percent and infrastructure at 2 percent, so an investor reads the line matching the project rather than a single EB-5 row. As at 5 August 2026, USCIS requires every employment-based adjustment applicant, EB-5 included, to use the Final Action Dates chart of the August 2026 Visa Bulletin.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into final action date rather than mentioning it.
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.
- 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.
- RetrogressionVisa retrogression is a Visa Bulletin cut-off date moving backward, so a priority date that was current one month is not current the next, because demand in a category or country outran the visa numbers available.
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