Priority Date Question

[immigration123 0]

Hello,

I have a question about the priority date for Green Card application. I am on an H-1B and also in the process of my Green Card application with the EB3 category. My priority date is 2/16/2006. I was checking the last 5 years visa bulletin on uscis.com and I noticed the cutoff dates in July 2007 ( even if it was just a short period of time) were current, meaning( correct me if I am wrong) anyone could have become eligible for a visa number regardless of their priority date. So, given this, would have I been eligible to apply for a visa number for AOS? I am wondering if my employer missed this opportunity and I was not notified about it. I just happened to learned about this July 2007 visa bulletin that had C for EB3 category. And in addition to this, in May and June 2008, the cut off dates were 3/1/2006. Again, could have I been able to apply for a visa number since my priority date falls before the cut off date? Could you clarify this for me and help me understand if I am interpreting the visa bulletins incorrectly? Thank you.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

I don't know what happened in July 2007, but it seems like they were flooded with applications as a result of that visa bulletin. They issued an addendum on July 2 stating that they stopped accepting employment based applications.

http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_3266.html

Anyway, the current visa bulletin controls your eligibility, and they do occasionally roll the cutoff dates back when the level of oversubscription increases. You may have had a two day window in July 2007 to submit your application. By August 2007 all numbers were unavailable, probably because of the updated bulletin I linked to. By September 2007 the cutoff date had rolled back to August 2002.

According to the current visa bulletin, you've still got about a year to go, but you should still watch the bulletin every month as the cutoff dates have been advancing by two or three months from one bulletin to the next lately. Many people who applied for an employment based visa years ago are not applying for their visas now that their priority dates are becoming current because the US economy has tanked, which is causing the cutoff dates to advance more quickly.