Family visas or green card petitions are segmented into different priority levels. Applicants with U.S. citizen family petitioners will have priority over those with family members who only have green cards.

The different types of family-sponsored visa categories are roughly as follows:

• F1: The unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens.
• F2: The spouses and children of Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs or green card holders).
• F2A: Spouses and Children of LPRs.
• F2B: Unmarried Adult Children of LPRs.
• F3: Married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens.
• F4: Brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens.

VISA BULLETIN FOR EMPLOYMENT-BASED VISAS

The U.S. has five major types of employment-based green cards:

• EB-1: Priority workers with extraordinary abilities, outstanding professors or researchers, and executives or mangers who have transferred to the U.S.
• EB-2: Individuals with advance degrees, exceptional abilities, or holding a national interest waivers.
• EB-3: Skilled workers, professionals, and others who don’t qualify for EB-1 or EB-2.
• EB-4: Religious workers, broadcasters, Iraq/Afghan translators, Iraqis who have assisted the United States, physicians, Armed forces members, Panama Canal Zone employees, Retired NATO-6 employees, spouses and children of deceased NATO-6 employees.
• EB-5: Investors who are investing in a new commercial enterprise.

WAIT TIMES

Categories for each visa are supposed to go forward in time from month to month (called “advancement”), reflecting that more recently submitted applications are being processed as time goes on. However, this is not always the case when USCIS is overloaded with an unexpected number of applicants.

Retrogression most often occurs right after a visa category moves forward significantly, inciting a large wave of new applicants looking to take advantage of faster processing times. Retrogression is a way for USCIS to “put on the brakes” for new applications, so to speak. Priority dates for work-based green cards in India recently advanced several years, and there were so many new applicants as a result that the category was almost immediately penalized with retrogression. Normally, visa categories with the most applicants have the slowest advancement and are the most vulnerable to retrogression.

Employment-based immigrant visa petitions will commonly take less time than family-based visas for a number of reasons. There are far fewer employment-based applications due to low government caps, and the work-based visa application process requires the applicant and his or her United States employer to provide an immense and exceptionally detailed amount of information before proceeding.

The visa bulletin publishes “priority dates for visa categories monthly, which let applicants know how far along they are on the wait list. A priority date is like the “now serving sign at a deli counter or a fast food restaurant: the priority date listed is the application date of the people USCIS is currently serving. Having a “current visa category means you don’t even have to take a number.