Total EB catagory 140,000
Total Family Catagory 226,000
EB-1 40320
EB-2 40320 + Unsued EB-1
EB-3 40320
Others:19040
Caveat:
No county can get more than 7% of world wide limits that means:
7% of Total World Wide Limit = 0.07 x (140,000 + 226,000 ) = 25,620
Cutoff dates are selected based on following criteria:
If the demand could not be satisfied within the statutory or regulatory
limits, the category or foreign state in which demand was excessive was
deemed oversubscribed. The cut-off date for an oversubscribed category
is the priority date of the first applicant who could not be reached
within the numerical limits.
So if the First EB-2 applicant not reached in the linits is in 2002 or even 2001
(because of 340,000 pending labors at BEC this might be possible), that is how far back the dates will go.
It will move at pace governed by how many EB-2's are in BEC in various months. I DON'T KNOW HOW MONTHLY ALLOCATION WORKS OR HOW THE NUMBERS ARE SPREAD OVER A PERIOD OF ONE YEAR.
It will become unavialable for a certain country depending upon when a
country exhaust 25,600.
It wil become unavailable to all if 40,320 + All ununsed EB-1 are used up by EB-2.
In most scenario becasue of the way things are it will be worst for India/China. Another paradox is when people from India and China will be waiting for visa numbers there will be some visa numbers that will be unused and ubsequently lost becasue there will be no takers from other countries.
Besides historical retrogression data is irrelevant in current context because,
1. Year 2000 and 2001 has 160,000 H1B compared to 65,000 in other years
2. Number of approvals in 2002 and 2003 have been historically very low leading to backlogs.
