Guide · Immigration

Priority Dates and the Visa Bulletin: How the Line Moves

An approved petition does not mean a visa is available. Where the priority date comes from, how to read the Bulletin, and how to keep your place.

By Lincoln Square Law · 8-minute read

An approved family or employment petition establishes that a person qualifies for a green card category. It does not mean a green card is available. In most preference categories, demand exceeds the number of visas the law allows each year, and applicants wait in line. The priority date is the applicant’s place in that line, and the State Department’s monthly Visa Bulletin shows how far the line has moved. This guide explains where a priority date comes from, how the Bulletin works, how a date can be kept or lost, and how to plan around a wait that can run from months to decades.

Where the priority date comes from

For a family-based petition, the priority date is the date the petition was properly filed and received by USCIS (8 C.F.R. 204.1(b)). For an employment-based petition that requires a labor certification, it is the date the Department of Labor accepted the labor certification application for processing. When no labor certification is required, as in a national interest waiver or EB-1 petition, it is the date the completed, signed petition was properly filed with USCIS (8 C.F.R. 204.5(d)). The priority date appears on the approval notice. A filing that is rejected as incomplete does not establish one.

Why there is a line

The statute sets annual numerical limits. The State Department’s Visa Bulletin for September 2026 lists the fiscal year 2026 worldwide limits as 226,000 for family-sponsored preference immigrants and 186,317 for employment-based preference immigrants, with a per-country limit of 28,862. The per-country limit comes from INA 202(a)(2), which generally caps any single country at seven percent of the combined preference total. Within each category and country, visas are issued in the order in which petitions were filed (INA 203(e)).

Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, meaning spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents of adult citizens, are not subject to these limits (INA 201(b)(2)(A)(i)). Their priority dates do not control when they can immigrate. The line applies to the family preference categories, such as unmarried sons and daughters of citizens (F1), spouses and children of permanent residents (F2A), unmarried adult sons and daughters of permanent residents (F2B), married sons and daughters of citizens (F3), and brothers and sisters of adult citizens (F4), and to the employment preference categories.

Reading the Visa Bulletin

Each month the Bulletin publishes two charts for each category and for the countries with heavy demand. The Final Action Dates chart shows when a visa can actually be issued or an adjustment approved. A priority date earlier than the date listed is current. The Dates for Filing chart shows when applicants may begin submitting documents or, if USCIS allows it that month, file for adjustment of status. The Bulletin itself directs applicants to USCIS’s visa bulletin page to learn which chart USCIS will accept for adjustment filings that month. Unless USCIS says otherwise, the Final Action Dates chart applies.

A few entries from the September 2026 Final Action Dates chart show how different the waits can be. For most countries, F2A was listed as August 22, 2026, while F4 was October 22, 2011. For Mexico, F1 was January 1, 2008. In the employment categories, EB-2 was current for most countries, China-mainland born applicants had a cutoff date in 2021, and EB-2 was unavailable for India. The fiscal year ends on September 30, and new annual limits apply from October 1, so the October Bulletin often looks different from September’s.

Checking a case against the chart

Three facts are needed to read the Bulletin for a particular case. The first is the category, which appears on the approval notice. The second is the priority date, also on the notice. The third is the country of chargeability, which is generally the country of birth rather than citizenship (INA 202(b)). The statute allows some exceptions, such as charging an applicant to a spouse’s country of birth when that helps them immigrate together. With those three facts, find the category row and the country column in the chart USCIS has designated that month, and compare the dates. If the priority date is earlier than the date shown, the case is current. If the entry reads C, the category is current for everyone. If it reads U, no visas are available that month.

Movement is not a straight line

Dates can move forward, stay put for months, or move backward. When demand in a category exceeds the numbers left in the fiscal year, the State Department may retrogress the date or make the category unavailable until the new year begins. The September 2026 Bulletin warned that this could happen to EB-2 before the fiscal year ended. A date that was current when an application was filed may no longer be current when the officer is ready to approve it. Adjustment applications remain pending in that situation, but the green card cannot be approved until the date becomes current again.

Keeping a priority date

A priority date can outlast the petition that created it in several situations:

• Later employment petitions. An approved employment-based petition generally gives the worker its priority date for a later petition in the first, second, or third employment category, unless approval was revoked for fraud or willful misrepresentation, the labor certification was revoked or invalidated, or USCIS found the approval was a material error (8 C.F.R. 204.5(e)).
• Automatic conversion. When a permanent resident petitioner naturalizes, a pending or approved petition for a spouse or child under 21 converts to the immediate relative category, and a petition for an unmarried son or daughter converts to F1 (8 C.F.R. 204.2(i)(3)). A child who is the principal beneficiary of an F2A petition and turns 21, without protection under the Child Status Protection Act, moves to F2B and keeps the original priority date.
• Child Status Protection Act. For preference-category children, the Act adjusts the child’s age by the time the petition was pending, if the child seeks to acquire permanent residence within one year of visa availability (INA 203(h)). The Board of Immigration Appeals held that the Act’s automatic conversion and retention clause applies only where the petition can convert to another category without a new petitioner (Matter of Wang, 25 I&N Dec. 28 (BIA 2009)), and the Supreme Court upheld that reading (Scialabba v. Cuellar de Osorio, 573 U.S. 41 (2014)).

Planning around the wait

The priority date shapes nearly every decision in a preference case. A family that expects a long wait should plan for the possibility that a child will age out, that the petitioner will naturalize and change the category, or that a marriage will move a beneficiary into a category with a different line, or out of one entirely. An F2B beneficiary who marries while the parent is still a permanent resident loses eligibility, because no category exists for married children of permanent residents. A worker with a long wait should know whether the priority date can be carried to a new petition before changing employers.

For people in the United States, the date also governs when adjustment of status can be filed and what status must be maintained in the meantime. For people abroad, it governs when the National Visa Center will schedule an interview. In both cases, the Bulletin should be checked every month rather than assumed.

When to get advice

Get advice before any change that might affect the category: a marriage, a divorce, a petitioner’s naturalization, a child’s twenty-first birthday, or a job change in an employment case. The effect of each depends on the category, the priority date, and the current Bulletin. A priority date that has taken years to reach the front of the line is worth protecting.