saras 76 from TSC I-485 forum wrote this:
have been looking into this issue at length and have found the following. As kamma has stated, in April 2001 about 300,000 illegal immigrants across America filed for their labor cert. April 2001 was the deadline for the amnesty. Most of these 300,000 cases were filed under EB3 category. These cases have largely been stuck in local labor processing centers over the past 4 years. Since these cases were stuck at the labor stage for the past 4 years, the priority dates for EB3s remained current. Towards the middle of last year (05) the labor centers began approving the 245(i) cases and these cases started becoming eligible for 485 filing. This trend scared the DOS and they retrogressed EB3s in all categories anticipating a flood of 245(i) cases from 2001 that will require visas. Their logic was that people with PDs after 2001 should not get approved before the tens of thousands of PDs from 2001 and before. Hence retrogression began. Now onto how this affects India EB3s directly.
Every year in Oct (start of new fiscal year for the govt) 140,000 visas are made avaible for EB3s. These 140,000 visas are divided amongst the different nationalities. Since India, China, Mexico and Phillipines have the most number of applicants, the goverment has set a limit of 7% visas per year for these countries. This means that in any one year only 7% of 140,000 visas can be given to Indian nationals. So 9,800 Indian nationals can get their GC in a year. The same holds true for China, Mexico and Phillipines. So about 40,000 of the 140,000 visas are given to India, China, Mexico and Phillipines. The remaining 100,000 visas are alloted to the Rest of the World category. In the past, the rest of the world category barely used up even half of the alloted visas. These visas were then given away to applicants from India, China, Mexico and Phillipines. Now comes the troubling part. Since the EB3 category is projected to see a surge of 245(i) cases primarily from India, Mexico and other countries these 245(i) cases will eat into the 7% cap for these nations and will also eat up the visas left over from the Rest of the world category. So technically the extra visas from the Rest of the world category that were made available to countries such as India and China are now going to be eaten up by the surge of 245(i)s from 2001. Irrespective of the the nationality of the 245(i) applicants, they are impacting every category witihn EB3. That is the main reason that almost all EB3 categories have retrogressed and will remain so for a while. Its a grim picture but thats the reality.