Retrogression: Doing the Math

[nashdel]

I had done this exact same calculation; however, did not consider spillover effect.
Is the spillover just a result of EB redistribution or rollover of unused #s from past years?

I know for sure family based cases spill over to EB. But I am not sure if unused EB go to oversubscribed countries. Most likely they do. I am Pasting Relevant portion from PDF document posted by infostarved in last message.


Employment-based visas that are not used in a fiscal year are shifted (or “recaptured”) the following fiscal year into the family-sponsored visa categories under a complex statutory formula. While this concept is intended to recapture unused visas, in reality, this process of recapturing visa numbers between the two categories, coupled with USCIS processing of employment-based visa applications below DOS projections, has resulted in the loss of thousands of employment-based visas under the formula over multiple years. Between FY 2001 and FY 2004, over 141,000 employment-based immigrant visa numbers were unused.25 This number effectively represents an entire year’s supply of employment-based visas. It is ironic that many thousands of employment-based immigrant visas simply evaporated while thousands of applications sat idle and generated demand for interim benefits. U.S. citizens and businesses had legitimate expectations of visa availability only to have them lost to delays and processing problems. To make up for the visa numbers lost in this process, Congress provided 180,000 additional employment-based visas under the American Competitiveness in the Twenty First Century Act of 2000.26 However, USCIS was not able to meet the increased level of production necessary to process and approve 180,000 additional applications so that many of these numbers remained unused until the current fiscal year. The Ombudsman commends USCIS for its recent efforts to reduce the pending employment-based green card applications by rapidly processing pending cases at the four service centers due in part to concerns raised by the Ombudsman regarding the loss of available visa numbers. In recent months, USCIS has increased the processing of applications for employment-based green cards as much as fourfold per month. This rapid processing has 25 This figure (141,000) is based on DOS figures that include employment-based visas that were allocated by statute but unused to support an adjustment of status application or immigrant visa.


Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Annual Report to Congress, June 2005
resulted in the establishment of visa cut-off dates for certain categories of employment-based immigrant applicants restricting certain country nationals from filing green card applications. However, because of the inability to effectively coordinate with DOS, USCIS has continued to accept thousands of new applications each month while continuing to maintain large numbers of pending applications at its offices which far exceed available visas. The Ombudsman has raised this issue with USCIS and DHS leadership, and efforts to address issues of efficiency and customer service are ongoing.[/U]



(Employment-based visas lost, by year, were: FY 2001—5,553; FY 2002—none; FY 2003—88,515; FY 2004—47,297. 26 See Pub. L. No. 106-313, 114 Stat. 1251. In addition, recently enacted emergency supplemental appropriations provide for an additional 50,000 employment-based visas for the Department of Labor’s Schedule A occupations, which primarily consist of nurses and physical therapists. See Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, 119 Stat 231.

 

[LCSilence]

Read this

Retrogression, The Real Numbers

The FY 2006 140,000 employment-based numbers will increase by 7,000 numbers (overflow from family immigration numbers per the existing statutory scheme). Another one-time 101,000 numbers will be recaptured from FY 1999-2004 and will also be added to FY 2006, bringing the total to 248,000. This may portend some dramatic improvement in the Visa Bulletin in the balance of FY 2006 but it may not be enough. Different solutions are being considered for meaningful relief. These include: reallocation of the diversity visa (55,000) numbers by eliminating the DV category, and recapturing erroneously counted employment numbers (rumored to be significant). Other solutions being considered are the issuance of advance parole and EAD eligibility to primary applicants and spouses applying for their I-140s and large permanent increases in permanent employment numbers through the Mc-Cain-Kennedy bill. This pressing problem will surely provide ample opportunity for creativity during this Congress.

 

[nashdel]

why not 180k as mentioned in USCIS report in june. why only 101K. Have they used 79K already in last 3 months. USCIS report was published in June 2005.

 

[infostarved]

Fallacy

The fallacy in your argument is that typically family based petitions remain pending for different amounts of time compared to EB petitions - some longer and some shorter. In other words if you pick a pending application at random the likelihood of it being an EB application is a function of the above factor (in addition to being a function of the actual ratio of EB petitions approved to total petitions approved).

I am trying to quantify what I am saying above (factoring in processing times from service centers... believe it or not) and hope to come up with a number and get out of this particular analysis rathole.

Just wanted to check if I missed the stat and just reinventing the wheel.

Also, I agree with you that the current retro is more because of DoL backlogs than actual USCIS backlogs and I'll get to that. But the PD movement which is what I ultimately hope to predict (flame throwers... this is your cue to tell me I am wasting my time ) will sort of depend upon the actual backlog split.

According to Muthy.com: The vast majority of legal immigrants were family-based, either as immediate relatives (spouses, children, or parents of U.S. Citizens) or through the various family-preference categories. In FY 2000 approximately 585,000 individuals were granted permanent resident status based upon their relationships to U.S. Citizens or U.S. Permanent Residents. The remaining legal immigration was through employment, accounting for approximately 100,000.

So I would say, among the 750K pending cases, at most 150K will be employment based: almost a year's worth of employment based visa quota.

I might be wrong, however I don't think the current bad situation was because too many pending I485 cases, it is more about USCIS and DOL don't know how many are going to file I485 cases which have a PD before 2002.

 

[infostarved]

My guess - Ombudsman doesnt know what he is saying on this count - DoS Jan 05 visa bulletin says only 101k were left.

why not 180k as mentioned in USCIS report in june. why only 101K. Have they used 79K already in last 3 months. USCIS report was published in June 2005.

 

[LCSilence]

You are right the statics I cited reflected the through put of the system instead of actually pending amount. However it is better than nothing.

To predict DOL backlog, one important factor is: What is the breakdown of the PDs. Anybody has information on this?

 

[nashdel]

Following is from


http://www.lewslaw.com/US_Immigration_Updates.htm#09142005b


Update From DOL Backlog Reduction Centers (09-14-2005) [Top]

As of September 12, 2005, the total number of cases forwarded to the two centers was approximately 345,000. Some cases are still in the San Francisco and New York regional offices.

Currently, approximately 90% of cases at the Backlog Reduction Centers have had at least partial data entry. However, 45 day letters are generated only for the cases with full data entry. In the next few months, the centers plan to complete full data entry of all cases and issue the 45-day letters.

To date, the centers have been processing RIR and traditional cases where recruitment was previously completed and no further recruitment was required.

In the next few months, the centers will be preparing to process cases requiring recruitment.


I guess if they do not have full data entry yet how would they publish PD breakdown into different EB categories.

 

[LCSilence]

Sorry for my ignorance. But what is 45 days letter?

If DOL don't know PD breakdown, then the PD rollback is a guessing game. They just rolled it back to make sure few people can file 485.

 

[infostarved]

Pending 485 appl estimate

According to the annual CIS ombudsman report of 2005 (http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/CIS_AnnualReport_2005.pdf), there were 750K pending green card applications as of April 30, 2005

I set out to find out the number of EB applications out of this 750K. The rest of the mail describes the methodology I follow and for the bottomline people, if you scroll down you'll find the number.

1. First I estimate the number in each service center out of this 750K. To do this, I took the statewise distribution of intended-residence for new permanent residents in FY2004 (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2004/table11.xls), summed it up into service center jurisdictions and found the percentage of people approved by each service center in FY2004. This turned out to be....

CSC: 31%, NSC: 17%, TSC: 23%, VSC: 29%

I assume that this percentage should be the same for pending GC applications. Splitting 750K into the above percentages I get....

CSC: 229K, NSC: 131K, TSC: 176K, VSC: 214K


2. The next task is to find out... of the pending applications within each service center, what percentage is EB? You cannot simply divide it in the ratio of approved applications in each class from the previous year. You need to take into account the differing processing times. Luckily this is published information. (Note: I know a lot guys think that publication is baloney... but I am going to assume those are fringe cases... my own personal experience has correlated with that publication pretty well). Anyway...


Suppose in a year 'X' GC applications are approved in some service center. Let the percentage of approved applications in class i (example of classes: employment based, immediate relative of US citizen etc) be designated by c(i).
Let the processing times of class i be designated by t(i) measured in years.
Then at any given time, the number of pending applications is....
Pending = c(1)t(1)X + c(2)t(2)X...... + c(n)t(n)X

The percentage of employment based applications
= c(EB)t(EB)X / Pending
= c(EB)t(EB) / sigma(c(i)t(i))

Collecting c(i):
I wanted to get the classwise distribution of GC approvals in FY2004 for each service center. Unfortunately this is not available service center wise, but is available statewise (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/data/DSLPR04s.htm). I looked at enough states to cover 80% of all immigration in FY2004 and collected them into their service center jurisdictions to get the classwise distribution at each service center.

Collecting t(i):
I wanted to get the processing time for each class at each service center on the date closest to April 30 2005 (date of the ombudsman report). Luckily this is archived at http://www.immigration.com/processing-times/uscisarchi.html

Some data extrapolation:
I could not find processing times for asylees and diversity guys. I assumed that diversity processing times were similar to immediate relatives of US citizens (holds some water if you look at diversity visa forums), and asylee processing was about the same as siblings of US citizens (ditto). I clubbed "other" with diversity to be pessimistic about pending EB numbers.


I'll spare you the calculation... the results were...
Within each service center the % of EB applications were as follows - quite a surprising result, though not illogical....

CSC: 2.8%, NSC: 15.4%, TSC: 14.0%, VSC: 10.3%

Multiplying these percentages with their respective pending GC applications, we get the number of pending EB applications in each service center....

CSC: 6K, NSC: 20K, TSC: 25K, VSC: 22K

..... a total of 73K pending employment-based applications.

 

[akela]

Overflow From Category

I had a simple question. If say there are 28% EB-2 quota for all Employment based green card, and if all is not used, it will overflow to EB-3.

1. Does that happen in the same fiscal year or it happens in the next fiscal year.
2. If that were to happen (that would mean that EB-2 for all world will be current and then there are not enough applicants to exhaust all of EB-2 quota), what would happen to EB-2 applicants from country like India or China, will all the applicants from India/China in EB-2 will be alloted the unused EB-2 numbers or the country specefic quota kicks in (i.e. not more than 2800 (IF THE LIMIT IS 140,000)Indians a year for EB-2). What rules kick in first, that everyone in EB-2 will be first allotated the EB-2 gc (first of course it will follow per country limit, but what if after per country, there are still eb-2 GC left, then, can the over subscribed countries with EB-2 visas dip into that extra EB-2) or it will simply spill to EB-3.

rgds,
a

 

[infostarved]

Same fiscal year.

Per country can be lifted only when everybody's hunger is satisfied.. EB 1,2,3,4,5.... all of em.

As far as I can see, DoS violated the immigration and nationality act when it allowed EB3 to go unavailable worldwide but let EB1 and EB2 be current for oversubscribed countries in Q4-FY2005

I had a simple question. If say there are 28% EB-2 quota for all Employment based green card, and if all is not used, it will overflow to EB-3.

1. Does that happen in the same fiscal year or it happens in the next fiscal year.
2. If that were to happen (that would mean that EB-2 for all world will be current and then there are not enough applicants to exhaust all of EB-2 quota), what would happen to EB-2 applicants from country like India or China, will all the applicants from India/China in EB-2 will be alloted the unused EB-2 numbers or the country specefic quota kicks in (i.e. not more than 2800 (IF THE LIMIT IS 140,000)Indians a year for EB-2). What rules kick in first, that everyone in EB-2 will be first allotated the EB-2 gc (first of course it will follow per country limit, but what if after per country, there are still eb-2 GC left, then, can the over subscribed countries with EB-2 visas dip into that extra EB-2) or it will simply spill to EB-3.

rgds,
a

 

[nato]

Nice anal, hope someone eventually at USCIS will explain too finally

According to the annual CIS ombudsman report of 2005 (http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/CIS_AnnualReport_2005.pdf), there were 750K pending green card applications as of April 30, 2005

I set out to find out the number of EB applications out of this 750K. The rest of the mail describes the methodology I follow and for the bottomline people, if you scroll down you'll find the number.

1. First I estimate the number in each service center out of this 750K. To do this, I took the statewise distribution of intended-residence for new permanent residents in FY2004 (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2004/table11.xls), summed it up into service center jurisdictions and found the percentage of people approved by each service center in FY2004. This turned out to be....

CSC: 31%, NSC: 17%, TSC: 23%, VSC: 29%

I assume that this percentage should be the same for pending GC applications. Splitting 750K into the above percentages I get....

CSC: 229K, NSC: 131K, TSC: 176K, VSC: 214K


2. The next task is to find out... of the pending applications within each service center, what percentage is EB? You cannot simply divide it in the ratio of approved applications in each class from the previous year. You need to take into account the differing processing times. Luckily this is published information. (Note: I know a lot guys think that publication is baloney... but I am going to assume those are fringe cases... my own personal experience has correlated with that publication pretty well). Anyway...


Suppose in a year 'X' GC applications are approved in some service center. Let the percentage of approved applications in class i (example of classes: employment based, immediate relative of US citizen etc) be designated by c(i).
Let the processing times of class i be designated by t(i) measured in years.
Then at any given time, the number of pending applications is....
Pending = c(1)t(1)X + c(2)t(2)X...... + c(n)t(n)X

The percentage of employment based applications
= c(EB)t(EB)X / Pending
= c(EB)t(EB) / sigma(c(i)t(i))

Collecting c(i):
I wanted to get the classwise distribution of GC approvals in FY2004 for each service center. Unfortunately this is not available service center wise, but is available statewise (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/data/DSLPR04s.htm). I looked at enough states to cover 80% of all immigration in FY2004 and collected them into their service center jurisdictions to get the classwise distribution at each service center.

Collecting t(i):
I wanted to get the processing time for each class at each service center on the date closest to April 30 2005 (date of the ombudsman report). Luckily this is archived at http://www.immigration.com/processing-times/uscisarchi.html

Some data extrapolation:
I could not find processing times for asylees and diversity guys. I assumed that diversity processing times were similar to immediate relatives of US citizens (holds some water if you look at diversity visa forums), and asylee processing was about the same as siblings of US citizens (ditto). I clubbed "other" with diversity to be pessimistic about pending EB numbers.


I'll spare you the calculation... the results were...
Within each service center the % of EB applications were as follows - quite a surprising result, though not illogical....

CSC: 2.8%, NSC: 15.4%, TSC: 14.0%, VSC: 10.3%

Multiplying these percentages with their respective pending GC applications, we get the number of pending EB applications in each service center....

CSC: 6K, NSC: 20K, TSC: 25K, VSC: 22K

..... a total of 73K pending employment-based applications.

 

[MDGUTS1307]

Impressive !

Impressive calculations Inforstarved !

Based on the final EB numbers do you have any predictions on how fast the cases might move in FY 2006 ?

 

[LCSilence]

If EB2 is not used up by other countries, the unused number will be flowed to India and China EB2 not EB3.

 

[infostarved]

You're right LCSilence. I checked it and I stand corrected. Apologize for the misinformation.

8USC 1152(a)(5)(A) basically says what you said. If there are unused visas within an EB category, first it'll go to oversubscribed countries first, then it'll flow to the next category if any are still remaining. I thought it was the other way around.

Incidentally, as far as I can see, S.1033 McCain-Kennedy bill intends to abrogate this section of the INA. Anybody wants to comment on that.

If EB2 is not used up by other countries, the unused number will be flowed to India and China EB2 not EB3.

 

[LCSilence]

Infostarved you did some really impressive work here. Only 73K of employment based I485 pending. If know the PD distribution of BEC pending LCs, we can have the picture. Not as ugly as DOL let us believe, isn't it? Most 245(i) cases fall in "other workers" category not going to count against EB3 professionals. And most of them are not Inidan and Chinese I bet.

 

[infostarved]

..... Most 245(i) cases fall in "other workers" category not going to count against EB3 professionals.....

Is there any place where....
1. I can get confirmation of this.
2. Get ballpark percentages of pending labors in BECs that belong to "other worker".
3. Number of I-140 approvals over time.

 

[infostarved]

Thanks for the post UN. Hmmm.... I didnt realize most 245(i) were in the skilled worker category.

keep in mind that within eb3 there is "professional" and "skilled workers". Other workers are non degree and less then two years of experience.

Most of the 245i labors are actually skilled worker. chefs, cooks, carpenters, construction workers, drycleaners, etc. all their labors require two years of experience. All eb3 workers will compete with these category of workers. That is the main reason why other countries are retrogressed to March 2001 because these labors were generally filed by the illegal workers from all countries. Unfortunately, since other countries are using up their quota, there won't be a spillover to india/china/mexico, etc.

The bright side (don't know if it is bright), is that every tom, dick and harry filed a 245i labor for their friends. However, I've worked on cases where some of these companies had $15,000 in revenue. Although there are many labors filed, since most of them were illegals, they do not show they worked for the company and they have immense difficulty in getting the 140 approved.

 

[sfmars]

keep in mind that within eb3 there is "professional" and "skilled workers". Other workers are non degree and less then two years of experience.

Most of the 245i labors are actually skilled worker. chefs, cooks, carpenters, construction workers, drycleaners, etc. all their labors require two years of experience. All eb3 workers will compete with these category of workers. That is the main reason why other countries are retrogressed to March 2001 because these labors were generally filed by the illegal workers from all countries. Unfortunately, since other countries are using up their quota, there won't be a spillover to india/china/mexico, etc.

The bright side (don't know if it is bright), is that every tom, dick and harry filed a 245i labor for their friends. However, I've worked on cases where some of these companies had $15,000 in revenue. Although there are many labors filed, since most of them were illegals, they do not show they worked for the company and they have immense difficulty in getting the 140 approved.

It could be true. But the same time the fact is that majority of 245i are Mexicans. If to assume that 245i people start eat drastically EB3, Mexico will be significatly retrogressed pretty soon even more than India and China.

 

[velailla]

Latest Calculation

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=190805
From the above latest information: For FY2006 only 156000 EB visas are
available. So for EB3 28.6% of 156K = 44616 visas available. Out of these
take out "Other workers" which is max of 10K. So 34616 is available for "Professionals" and "Skilled" workers. So per month quota is: 2884. If you impose
7% country limit on this number it comes to: 202 visas per month. Looks to me that the PD movement will be very very slow(in EB3) atleast until July 06 at which point they will have the number of remaining visas for the remaining FY2006.