EB-2 Priority Dates: India, China & Rest of World (October 2026)

Final Action: Nov 1, 2013 (Recovered from Unavailable from the previous bulletin). Dates for Filing: Jan 15, 2015. Your priority date must be earlier than the listed date. For employment-based adjustment of status this month, USCIS accepts I-485 filings under the Dates for Filing chart.

Each country is limited to 7% of the combined family and employment preference visas each year. Demand from applicants born in India exceeds that share, so India gets its own, later cutoff date. India is 134 months behind the Rest of World Final Action date (Jan 1, 2025).

No one outside the State Department knows, and this site does not publish forecasts. What the record shows: over the last 13 bulletins, the EB-2 India Final Action date advanced 5 times, retrogressed 1 times, stayed flat 3 times, and was Unavailable in 3 bulletins. The Visa Bulletin itself sometimes includes notes on expected movement; check the official text each month.

No. The National Interest Waiver is a way to file in the EB-2 category without a job offer or PERM labor certification. An approved NIW petition waits in the same EB-2 queue, under the same country-of-birth cutoff, as any other EB-2 petition.

Generally, a priority date from an approved I-140 carries over to a later I-140 petition, unless the earlier approval was revoked for fraud, willful misrepresentation, a material error, or invalidation of the labor certification. Which category is faster changes over time — compare the EB-2 and EB-3 tables for your country of birth, and have an attorney confirm your case.