My explanation for why EB3 became "U" in July 05
To predict the future you have to explain the past... so listen up ppl....
Disclaimers and prerequisites...
1. I am assuming you have read and understood the statutary limits on employment based immigration. Please refer to my older post on reading material if you havent.
2. Forget for the moment AC21 - the pool of 100K visas from '99,'00 - it hasnt kicked in since FY2002... there was no need.
3.
All statements below are logical conjectures on my part substantiated with facts and events wherever possible
You have to go back to FY2003 to understand this.
FY2003
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1. FY2003 had 64K unused family based visas (FB overflow) which by law is avlbl to EB guys in FY2004. So total EB limit for FY2004 was 140K + 64K = 204K (source:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/publications/FlowReportLegalPermResidents2004.pdf).
FY2004
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Look at the FY2004 limit of 204K EB visas. This makes a *minimum* of 58K avlbl to each of EB1,EB2 and EB3 (the 28.6% rule). The following were the real consumptions....
EB1 = 31K, EB2=32K
(source:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/publications/FlowReportLegalPermResidents2004.pdf)
So, at the minimum, EB3 had (58K - 31K) + (58K-32K) + 58K = 111K this year.
Actual consumption in EB3 was 86K, much less than the visas avlbl. Since nobody went home unsatisfied, per-country caps evaporated too. So all dates were current all through FY2004.
FY2005
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For FY2005, the FB overflow from '04 was only 8K (source: Sep 05 bulletin). Therefore the total avlbl EB visas on '05 are 140K + 8K = 148K. This brings the visas avbl to EB1 and EB2 to only 28.6%*148K = 42K each. From 04's experience state dept expects....
(42K - 31K) + (42K - 32K) + 42K = 63K visas avlbl for EB3.
From 04's experience, state dept also knows that this number is not enough (86K > 63K) and somebody is going to go unhappy... so for sure the caps cannot be lifted, so it makes noises early in the year and imposes EB3 cut-off dates of 1 Jan 2002 on oversubscribed countries in the Jan 05 bulletin.
Furthermore, the per-quarter limitation of 27%, makes only
27% * 63K = 17K EB3 visas avlbl in Q1 of FY2005.
Sure enough, if demand aped the previous year, these 17K would be gobbled up in...
17K/86K * 12 = 2.36 months i.e mid Dec 04.
...
exactly what the Jan 05 bulletin says in section D.2
At this point, state dept probably hopes that the cutoffs will reduce the EB3 consumption from
oversubscribed countries significantly, probably enough to keep away from a worldwide EB3 cutoff. But no such luck....
Enter the just-got-labor-done-with-PDs-before-Jan02 folks in the rest of FY2005.... and the worldwide demand stays put.
So lo and behold EB3 becomes unavailable - "U" - without so much as a worldwide cutoff. How many months does it take to get to U?
63K/86K * 12 = 8.79 months.
Count 8.79 months from Oct 04 (beginning of FY2005) and tell me when it should become "U" guys ... tell me guys....
July 2005
I rest my case. Was long-labor-getting-done-now to blame like the bulletins keep claiming? Yes it did play a role in blindsiding the state dept. Is it the entire truth? Absolutely not!
The million dollar question is.... why hasn't AC21 kicked in already... and what's with the doomsday prediction about slow PD progress in the bulletins.