[Update January 9th, 2008 ] The February 2008 Visa Bulletin was just released and retrogression continued in the EB-2 category for nationals of India. Read about the retrogression, by following this link.

We recently posted the January 2008 Visa Bulletin from the State Department. An important development was the continued retrogression of the cut-off date for Indian nationals in the Second Preference for employment visas. The cut-off date in this category has moved from “April 1, 2004″ in the November Bulletin to “January 1, 2002″ in the December Bulletin to “January 1, 2000″ in the January Bulletin.

The State Department commented in the notes of the most recent bulletin:

It has been necessary to once again retrogress the India Employment Second preference cut-off date. This is a direct result of continued heavy applicant demand for numbers by CIS for adjustment of status cases despite the retrogression which occurred for December. It is likely that the annual limit for this category will be reached within the next few months, at which time the category would become “unavailable” for the remainder of fiscal year 2008.

The latest round of FAQs on Backlog Elimination from the Department of Labor (DOL) has been reproduced below. The original pdf version is available here (.pdf).

See http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/ for prior DOL Backlog Elimination FAQs.

Backlog Elimination
Frequently Asked Questions Round 8
December 2007

1. Question: When is the official date that the Dallas and Philadelphia BECs will close?
Answer: Both BECs will close on 12/21/07.

[Read more →]