Family-sponsored preference categories are limited to a minimum of 226,000 visas per year, while employment-based preference categories are limited to a minimum of 140,000 visas per year. The Visa Bulletin exists due to numerical immigrant visa limitations for family-sponsored and employment-based preference categories established by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Visa Bulletin estimates immigrant visa availability for prospective immigrants. You can check the status of a visa number by checking your priority date on the Department of State's Visa Bulletin published every month. If you would like to know more about priority dates and the visa bulletin please click here to learn more. What is a priority date?Ī priority date is generally the date when your relative or employer properly filed the immigrant visa petition on your behalf with USCIS. Once the immigrant’s priority date becomes current according to the Visa Bulletin, the applicant can proceed with their immigrant visa application. Applicants who fall under family preference or employment categories must wait in line until a visa becomes available to them in order to proceed with their immigrant visa applications. Family preference and employment immigrant categories are subject to numerical limitations and are divided by preference systems and priority dates on the Visa Bulletin. Immigrant visa petitions for spouses of US Citizens residing abroad are not subject to numerical limits, however the immigrant visa process is still a long and tedious one, due to the large volume of immigrant visa applications processed at the National Visa Center and waiting times to receive an interview at the applicant’s designated consular office. The National Visa Center recommends that an applicant wait at least 60 days from the date of the immigrant petition’s approval before calling to confirm the receipt of an application. It takes approximately 30-60 days for an immigrant visa application to be transferred from USCIS to the National Visa Center.
Once the immigrant visa petition has been approved by USCIS, the application is then forwarded to the National Visa Center located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where it will be pre-processed and retained until the immigrant visa application is ready to be adjudicated at the foreign national’s closest U.S.
Consulate, where the foreign national will eventually undergo their immigrant visa interview. The National Visa Center serves as an intermediary between USCIS, where the immigrant visa petition was first approved, and the U.S. The National Visa Center (NVC) is a government agency that is responsible for the pre-processing of all immigrant visa petitions approved by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) including family sponsored and employment based immigrant petitions of foreign nationals residing overseas.
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