sleepless_in_IN said:
According to this report (below) am I incorrect in interpreting that EB3 category filing (I-485 stage) will not progress past April 2001 in the next 16 years [(345K+275K)/(28% of 140K) = ~16years] in the worst case scenario?
Does it mean that EB3 cut off date it does not depend on country but on the total number of EB3 waiting in line first (then on country)? Meaning right now in year 2006 lets say the quota for country "X" is not used up - but that doesn't matter since cut off is placed by USIS at April 2001 based on total number of EB3 applications pending at thier center regardless of country?
Because there are so many 245i cases; people who filed after April 2001 will have to wait until all the 245i people have applied for I-485 (maybe excluding India, China, Mexico and Phillipines)?
Is there any way to find out how many 245i cases are pending in the "other" country category?
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"quoted from immigration-law.com"
Worldwide is still stuck with the 245(i) cases.. Reportedly, these numbers reached about 345,000 plus their dependants of estimated 250,000 - 275,000. A substantial number of these cases are still left behind in the DOL Backlog Elimination Center. These cases have been moving extremely slow, but once the Centers pick up the speed, these cases will add a tremendous pressures on the EB-3 visa numbers as most of these cases have very early priority dates. Worse yet, the USCIS is expected to pick up the speed of EB-485 adjudication to meet the Bush's commitment to reducing processing to six months by the end of September 2006, which is only eight months away. There are a huge number of 245(i) cases which have yet to move into the stream of EB-3 I-485 rows which will eventually take out EB-3 numbers, constraining the progression of EB-3 numbers continuously.
Some facts:
Retrogression is set at the country level with the employment visa category. So to answer your question: no what you are saying is not correct.
About your worst case scenario:
There are/were about 345,000 cases in the BPCs:
~60,000 cases were Regional. I doubt more than 10,000 were April 2001 cases or earlier.
NY receives approximately 12,000 cases per year. So for 2002 - 2005 we are looking at about 40,000 cases.
California is in a similar place if not more, so let's say 40,000 cases for 2002 - 2005.
NY is typically 15-20% of the volume in any given year.
So if we assume NY and California are 30-40% of any given year then the rest of the states would have about 120,000 cases for 2002-2005.
That leaves us with about 85,000 cases unaccounted for. Let's say they are all 245i cases.
Denial rates for 245i cases are higher than non-245i cases, about 30%. So out of BPC we would get about 56,000 cases.
Plus their dependents (using the same ratio as the total numbers you describe) ~40,000, for a total of 96,000 visa numbers.
Let's say they are all EB-3 (they could really be any category) at 28% of 140,000 = ~39,000. We are looking at less than 3 years. Now this is inaccurate because as I mentioned there are quotas by country and we don't know what countries the 245i cases are coming from.
Also remember that if EB-1 is not used up EB-3 can use them which is typically the case.
DISCLAIMER: There are a lot of assumptions on my part. If any of you disagree, that's fine. If you think I'm crazy you are probably right. I will be happy to answer constructive questions, all others I will graciously ignore.
Hope that helps.
