Immigrant Visa Availability

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MarineWife

Registered Users (C)
This may sound like a silly question but I've been trying to Google the information and haven't been successful. Not that it pertains to me, but for the sake of knowledge: When it comes to immigrant visas available for parents/siblings/children over 21 of USCs, is there a TOTAL number available. Like say 100 visas available and they're given out on a first come, first served basis OR is there a total number available PER country?

I'm thinking of how to better explain what I mean.

100 is just a hypothetical number.

Are there 100 total visas available and if the first 100 ppl that apply are from Russia, do these Russians get them OR are there 100 TOTAL visas available and 10 are allotted for Russians, 10 for Australians, 10 for Canadians, 10 for Nigerians etc.....

How does it work?
 
MarineWife said:
This may sound like a silly question but I've been trying to Google the information and haven't been successful. Not that it pertains to me, but for the sake of knowledge: When it comes to immigrant visas available for parents/siblings/children over 21 of USCs, is there a TOTAL number available. Like say 100 visas available and they're given out on a first come, first served basis OR is there a total number available PER country?

I'm thinking of how to better explain what I mean.

100 is just a hypothetical number.

Are there 100 total visas available and if the first 100 ppl that apply are from Russia, do these Russians get them OR are there 100 TOTAL visas available and 10 are allotted for Russians, 10 for Australians, 10 for Canadians, 10 for Nigerians etc.....

How does it work?
Click to expand...


It is a complex combination of factors. There are BOTH worldwide and per country limits. They are based on bizarre and complicated formulas described in the statute. See INA sections 201 through 204. Good luck trying to figure it out. See also the monthly Visa Bulletin which tries to explain it.
 
BigJoe5 said:
It is a complex combination of factors. There are BOTH worldwide and per country limits. They are based on bizarre and complicated formulas described in the statute. See INA sections 201 through 204. Good luck trying to figure it out. See also the monthly Visa Bulletin which tries to explain it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for responding BigJoe5. I will follow up the other thread you recommended and also try to "research" further. Just want to satisfy my curiosity.
 
MarineWife said:
Thanks for responding BigJoe5. I will follow up the other thread you recommended and also try to "research" further. Just want to satisfy my curiosity.
Click to expand...

Hey MarineWife,

Visa availability is counted in the following manner.

- For Parent, Child, and Spouse of a USC: Visa is available anytime anyday.
- For Other family member and other categories like Asylum, Refugee, Orphan, DV lottery e.t.c: Visas are counted per country.

They have the threshold (Maximum) they can give in a fiscal year that starts on Oct 1st of every year. lets assume they have 200,000 Visas available for fiscal year 2012. They divide this available visa per category. I think 50,000 visas goes to DV Lottery (confirmed), 5000 visas goes to refugee (Instance), 50,000 visas goes to other family categories (instance) e.t.c.

In the case of DV lottery, some countries are not qualified because they have clocked the maximum number of visas available for their country. Countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, UK, Peru, Mexico, India, China e.t.c. If you observe this country, you will realize that these country usually apply for Permanent residence in the US. DV lottery usually choose a total of about 100,000 winners and only 50,000 will be granted the visa. Some winner will be told that visa is finished. This is bcos many people from their country won. A single country cant not take more than 3500 out of the 50,000 visa. But some countries have more winners than others. For example, Africa countries have more winners because many don't immigrate from Africa. So to compensate that, they are given more slots in the DV.

All in all, the formula is that if you are from a country with high immigrants to the US, visa availability will be very low. Other visa availability will be high, depending on the number of immigrants from your country in the past years.

Countries like the UK, Canada will always have very low visa availability because there are many UK and Canada citizens living here. Most came in through Job transfer, and brought their family. The slots each family member takes affect some other applicants. Even if its a day old baby.

I hope you can understand a bit with my explanation.
 
It's a little more complicated, because there are different categories and unused numbers in one category can spill down to other categories. It's also worth noting that the UK and Canada don't have restrictions on visa availability outside of the DV - the large number of immigrants from these countries only affects the DV category and not EB or FB. For those, the nations with restrictions are India, China, Mexico and the Philippines.
 
MarineWife said:
@Lazhy


You explained perfectly and now I understand! Thank you for taking the time to write all that up!
Click to expand...

Yeah, its kind of complicated. When you get your GC, available visa for your country is reduced by one for this fiscal year. Immediate family (Father, Mother, Child/Children, Wife/Husband) of USC from your country wont be affected. Only applicants from other categories will be affected. So they have to wait a long time on the queue until visa is available for them depending on the category they are applying. Each category also has its preference.
You can read further from these USCIS link:

1) THE OPERATION OF THE IMMIGRANT NUMERICAL CONTROL SYSTEM:
http://www.travel.state.gov/pdf/Immigrant Visa Control System_operation of.pdf

2)
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/us...toid=aa290a5659083210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD
 
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