Visas and the queue

Visa Bulletin

Also called visa bulletin, DOS bulletin, 排期表.

The 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.

What it decides

Each issue carries two kinds of chart, Application Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing Applications, in one pair for family sponsored cases and a second pair for employment based cases. USCIS states each month which chart adjustment of status applicants may use, and it makes that call separately for the two systems, so family sponsored filings can be on Dates for Filing in a month when employment based filings are held to Final Action Dates. The employment based charts carry a general column headed All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed plus a separate column for each country whose demand requires one. There is no Hong Kong column. Section 103 of Pub. L. 101-649, 29 November 1990, deems the approval under INA 202(b) to have been granted for Hong Kong as a separate foreign state, effective beginning with fiscal year 1991, which puts Hong Kong born applicants on the 7 percent single foreign state limit rather than the 2 percent dependent area limit and leaves them reading the general column. The 7 percent limit is set by 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(2) and applies to the combined family and employment total made available under 8 U.S.C. 1153(a) and (b), not to each category separately. Fifth preference occupies several rows: unreserved, plus one row each for the rural, high unemployment and infrastructure set asides. Those rows move independently, so a set aside row can be current in a month when the unreserved row is backlogged. The priority date read against them is the date USCIS accepts the Form I-526 or I-526E for processing.

Governed by 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(2), per country levels, 7 percent for a single foreign state and 2 percent for a dependent area of the visas made available under 8 U.S.C. 1153(a) and (b) (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1152&num=0&edition=prelim); the note to that section, Treatment of Hong Kong Under Per Country Levels, Pub. L. 101-649, title I, sec. 103, 29 November 1990, 104 Stat. 4985, with the editorial note that sec. 103 was effective 29 November 1990 and applicable to fiscal year 1991; 22 CFR 42.51, Department control of numerical limitations, whose paragraph (b) allocates visa numbers in chronological order of priority dates (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/section-42.51); USCIS, Visa Availability and Priority Dates (https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/visa-availability-and-priority-dates), which names both charts; USCIS, Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin (https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/visa-availability-priority-dates/adjustment-of-status-filing-charts-from-the-visa-bulletin), which carries the monthly designation for each preference system. The bulletin itself is published by the Department of State at travel.state.gov, which returns 403 to scripts and is cited without a link.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into visa bulletin rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

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.
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.
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.
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.

Checked against primary sources on 6 August 2026. Back to the glossary