The October 2013 visa bulletin was released this week and as we predicted, the family- based F2A category for green cards was not current for very long. When the priority date falls back in time as it has for the F2A category it is known as "retrogression." The F2A category, which is designated for the minor unmarried children and spouses of green card holders, remains current through September 30, 2013 but it will retrogress for October and probably for much longer after that.

Visa wait times by category and country are outlined each month by the U.S. State Department in the visa bulletin. We discussed the different categories and wait times in our recent blog about visa wait times. If you would like to know more about each visa category and why some family-based visas and work-based visas have such long wait times, we suggest reading it.

Here are the priority dates for the October 2013 visa bulletin:

The priority dates show which green card applications are currently being processed, therefore a priority date of September 22, 1993 means USCIS is just now beginning to process applications submitted in September 1993.

The F2A category is luckily still very close to being current: September 8, 2013 is the priority date for all categories except Mexico, which has a September 1, 2013 priority date. This means F2A applicants will still not likely wait very long in comparison to the other family-based visa categories if they choose to apply soon.