The Visa Bulletin is a monthly U.S. Department of State publication showing whose green card cases can move forward. Find your category (e.g., F4 or EB-3), the column for your country and compare the date listed with your own priority date — an earlier priority date means a visa is available.
Every month, thousands of people around the world, including many Polish-American families in New York, New Jersey and Poland, open the same table and try to guess how much longer their case will take. At first glance, the Visa Bulletin looks like a spreadsheet for specialists. In reality it contains a simple rule: a queue ordered by date.
The law office of attorney Przemysław Jan Bloch has for years informed the Polish community every month about processing dates for family and employment visas. This guide does not give the dates for any particular month — they change every few weeks — but explains how to read the table yourself and what it means for your case.
What does the Visa Bulletin show, and why does it exist at all?
The law limits the number of green cards issued each year in the preference categories. According to the Department of State’s Visa Bulletin, the annual statutory limit for family preference categories is at least 226,000, and for employment-based categories at least 140,000. In addition, no country may receive more than 7 percent of the combined pool. When there are more applicants than visas, a queue forms.
The bulletin shows how far that queue has moved. For each category and each country it lists a date. If your priority date is earlier than the date in the table, a visa is available to you. The letter “C” (current) means numbers are available to all qualified applicants, and the letter “U” (unauthorized) means visas may not be issued in that category at the moment.
The priority date is your “number in line.” In family cases it is usually the filing date of the I-130 petition, and in employment cases with a PERM procedure — the filing date of the labor certification application. It appears on the receipt or decision notice for the petition.
The bulletin has two main parts: family-sponsored, with categories F1, F2A, F2B, F3 and F4, and employment-based, with categories EB-1 through EB-5, including the Other Workers subcategory for unskilled workers. The U.S. fiscal year starts on October 1, so the visa pool “renews” in the fall, and the biggest date movements are often seen in October bulletins and toward the end of the fiscal year.
Two charts: Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing — which one applies to you
The bulletin has two charts for each group of categories. The first, Final Action Dates, shows the dates at which a visa can actually be issued or a green card approved. The second, Dates for Filing, shows who may already start assembling documents for the National Visa Center or file an application — these are usually somewhat later dates, because they allow applicants to prepare ahead of time.
For people completing their case at a consulate, such as the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, the bulletin and correspondence from the National Visa Center set the next steps. For people applying for adjustment of status in the U.S., what matters is which chart USCIS designates in a given month — the agency announces this monthly on its website. The same priority date may therefore allow filing in one month and, after a chart change, not in the next.
Following the bulletin yourself costs nothing, but a mistake can be costly: a missed window to submit documents means lost months. That is why, in cases where the dates are close, it is worth having someone check the table every month who also knows the other stages of the case.
We can help you read the bulletin for your case — please call: 718-522-6773
The Visa Bulletin from a Polish perspective
Poland is not listed in the bulletin as a separate country with a longer queue, so people born in Poland use the column for all other countries (All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed). In practice, Poles wait in the “general” queue — usually shorter than for nationals of countries with record demand, but in categories F3 and F4 still many years long.
A hypothetical example: the brother of a U.S. citizen has a priority date in March, several years ago. In the Final Action Dates chart for category F4, in the column for all other countries, the date shown is February of that same year. This means his case is not yet current — the queue still has to “move forward” by about a month. Dates can, however, stand still, speed up and sometimes even move backward.
The same mechanism applies to employment cases. A worker from Ridgewood whose employer filed a PERM application checks the EB-2 or EB-3 category in the employment part of the bulletin and compares the labor certification filing date with the date in the table. The difference is that in employment cases the labor certification and the I-140 petition must be approved first — a current date alone is not enough if those stages are not complete.
We write more about family categories in the guide how long the wait is for a family green card, and about employment categories in the guide the PERM process step by step.
How to prepare for your first consultation at the law office
- The receipt or approval notice for the petition. A USCIS document (I-130 or I-140) showing the priority date and category.
- Correspondence from the National Visa Center. Letters and e-mails with the case number — they show what stage the case is at on the Department of State’s side.
- Information about country of birth. The column in the bulletin is generally determined by country of birth, not citizenship — for people born outside Poland this is an important difference.
- Family changes since the petition was filed. Marriage, divorce, a child turning 21, the sponsor’s naturalization — each of these can change the category.
- Plans for the coming months. A move, leaving the U.S., a job change. When the date is close, each of these decisions should be coordinated with the case.
Przemysław Jan Bloch, P.C. has followed the Visa Bulletin every month for years — see the firm’s profile and the matters it handles.
The most common mistakes when reading the bulletin
The first mistake is looking at the wrong category — for example F2A instead of F2B when a permanent resident’s child has already turned 21. The second is confusing the charts: a date in Dates for Filing does not yet mean a visa can be issued. The third is comparing the bulletin date with the petition approval date instead of the priority date.
The fourth mistake is assuming dates always move forward. In some months a category can move backward (so-called retrogression), especially toward the end of the fiscal year, when the visa pool runs out. Then a person who was “current” has to wait for the date to advance again.
The Visa Bulletin is a tool that makes realistic planning possible — children’s studies, selling an apartment in Poland, moving or changing jobs. It does, however, require regular checking and knowledge of the category your case is in.
If your priority date is approaching the date in the bulletin, this is the best moment to prepare your documents. Schedule a consultation with Przemysław Jan Bloch, P.C.: 718-522-6773
Every case requires an individual assessment — please contact Przemysław Jan Bloch, P.C. about your situation. This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
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