State Department February 2023 Visa Bulletin Summary

The Department of State has released the February 2023 Visa Bulletin. D&S provides a Monthly Summary of the employment-based priority dates. Most of the employment and family-based categories will remain the same in February as they did in January, including EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-4, and EB-5 categories worldwide and for India and China. However, EB-3 Other Workers countries, with the exception of India and China, will retrogress to January 1, 2020 for Final Action and to February 1, 2020 for Application Filing Dates. 

With respect to Final Action Dates, EB-1 China and India will maintain their Final Action cutoff date of February 1, 2022. All other EB-1 categories remain current. All EB-2 and EB-3 categories remain unchanged. All EB-3 Other Workers countries (except for India and China) will retrogress to January 1, 2020 for Final Action. In addition, for the Final Action date for the EB-5 Unreserved categories, the China and India cutoff dates will remain at March 22, 2015 and November 8, 2019, respectively. EB-5 Final Action dates will remain current for all other countries and EB-5 “Set Aside” categories.

With respect to Application Filing Dates, the Dates for Filing chart for February shows no change in cutoff dates for employment-based categories, with the exception of the worldwide EB-3 Other Workers retrogression. Specifically, the Application Filing Dates for all countries, with the exception of India and China, will retrogress by more than two and a half years to February 1, 2020. USCIS has announced that for February 2023 all family-based and employment-based preference categories must use the Application Filing Dates chart.