Very sad. Do you think we can see some movement in Oct bulletin?

can you please explain to me the priority date is it the date when I submit the i-360 or the date of submitt i-485

thanks

I-360 submission date

@F M thank you for responding. sure not the date of I-360 approval

@S A the October bulletin will be tricky for Religious Workers. The Sunset date expires in September, along with the Non-Minister R1 program, until the government passes the budget for the next fiscal year (if they include the R1 visa program in the budget). The program is temporary and requires to be renewed every year. That said, I think we MIGHT see a slight movement in OCT/NOV. We might move to mid or late 2019. The issue here is the SIJS is eating up all of the visas, and they still have over 45,000 SIJS backlog. For context, our category gets some 10,000 visas per year. I hope that answers your question.

@milad farhoud that would be the date of your I-360 submission.

@N G thanks

@N G Yeah, makes total sense. I really hope something changes either they pass a new rule or make changes on how they’re gonna process SIJs. It’s very unfair for all the religious workers

@N G Consider that even if there is an existing backlog of 45000 visas, the maximum that can be allotted to each country is 7%. Please correct me if I am wrong. So in that case, each country would be distributed an equal number of visas. So with that projection, what is the maximum that each country can be allotted in this category? EB-4? And can you also tell the exact distribution of visas within this category viz-a-viz Religious workers and dependents, broadcasters, SIJS and others? Thanks.

What is SIJS?

Let's urge USCIS to release the "EB 485 pending report" (btw they released for 10 years but stopped in 2018), which can give us a hint of the number of people waiting in line and estimate how long we need to wait. I filed FOIA request and commented on the USCIS data page to ask for this. (See more here: https://uscis.gov/archive/questions-and-answers-pending-employment-based-form-i-485-inventory)

Fair enough. You are not wrong. Confusion arises about whether the 7% threshold is triggered when both family and employment preferences are hit by a given country. I know for sure when 7% is hit in both preferences, a separate cut-off date is drawn out for the affected country., e.g. India, China, etc. Technically, 7% of 10,000 is 700. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico have the largest number of backlogged SIJS. That's 700 x 4. Then, other countries in South America have a significant amount of unaccompanied children as well. For the past three subsequent years, apart from 2022, USCIS and DOS didn't even use up to 7000 visas. As you can see, the challenge could be multi-faceted. There is no blueprint or guidance in the INA for an exact distribution. It only says that the Religious Workers category shouldn't use over 5,000 visas in an FY. I see it as a sort of marble cake or a kitchen sink — everything is mixed

I cannot predict or ascertain how long it'll take to process an AOS.