The US Visa bulletin for April summarizing the availability of immigrant numbers during April for ‘Final Action Dates’ and ‘Dates for Filing Applications,’ has been released. The dates indicate when immigrant visa applicants should be notified to assemble and submit required documentation to the National Visa Center.

According to the April Visa Bulletin, increased demand and number use by China and India in the EB-5 unreserved visa categories, combined with increased Rest of World demand and number use, made it necessary to retrogress the final action dates to hold number use within the maximum allowed under the FY-2025 annual limits.

It may also become necessary to establish a final action date for Rest of World countries if demand and number use continues to increase.

EB-5 Unreserved China: January 22, 2014India: November 1, 2019

All other countries: Current

EB-5 Set-AsidesRural: Current for all countriesHigh Unemployment: Current for all countries

Infrastructure: Current for all countries

China’s EB-5 Final Action Date will retrogress by about two and a half years in April, while India’s Final Action Date will retrogress by more than two years.

India’s EB-2 Final Action Date will be advanced by one month, while China’s will be advanced by over five months. India’s and China’s EB-3 Final Action Dates will be advanced by two and three months, respectively. Five weeks will be added to the Final Action Date EB-2 Worldwide. A month will be added to the EB-3 Worldwide Professional/Skilled Workers Final Action Date.

Congress limits the number of immigration visas that can be given each year. To change status to legal permanent residence, the applicant must have an immigrant visa available both at the time of filing and at the time of adjudication.

The Department of State provides a monthly Visa Bulletin that includes the cut-off dates for visa availability. As a result, the monthly Visa Bulletin determines which applicants are eligible to submit for adjustment of status and which are eligible for permanent residency. Applicants with a priority date before the cut-off date stated in the most recent Visa Bulletin are eligible to apply for permanent residency.

Usually the cut-off dates on the Visa Bulletin move forward in time, but not always. Demand for visa numbers by applicants with a variety of priority dates can fluctuate from one month to another, with an inevitable impact on cut-off dates.

Such fluctuations can cause cut-off date movement to slow, stop, or even retrogress. Visa retrogression occurs when more people apply for a visa in a particular category or country than there are visas available for that month.

Retrogression typically occurs toward the end of the fiscal year as visa issuance approaches the annual category, or per-country limitations. Sometimes a priority date that meets the cut-off date one month will not meet the cut-off date the next month.

When the new fiscal year begins on October 1, a new supply of visas is made available and usually, but not always, returns the dates to where they were before retrogression.

The following are the Final Action deadlines for issuing an immigrant visa or approving an application for an adjustment of status, per the State Department’s April Visa Bulletin:

EB-1: China will stay at November 8, 2022, whereas India would move forward by two weeks, to February 15, 2022. Every other nation will remain up to date.

EB-2: China will move nearly five months, to October 1, 2020, while India will advance one month, to January 1, 2013. By June 22, 2023, all other nations will have advanced five weeks.

China will advance by three months, to November 1, 2020, and India by two months, to April 1, 2013, for EB-3 Professionals and Skilled Workers. The date of January 1, 2023, will be one month earlier for all other nations.

EB-5: India will retrogress by more than two years, to November 1, 2019, and China by around two and a half years, to January 22, 2014, under the EB-5 Unreserved category. Every other nation will stay up to date. Additionally, the Infrastructure, High Unemployment, and Rural EB-5 set-aside categories will not change.

According to the Visa Bulletin Final Action Dates chart, USCIS will begin accepting employment-based adjustment of status applications in April, the agency said on its own Visa Bulletin website.

Foreign nationals must have a priority date for their preference category and country that is earlier than the date below to be able to submit an employment-based adjustment application in April.

For fiscal year (FY) 2025, the United States will no longer be providing visas under the Employment-Based Fourth Preference (EB-4) category. In close coordination with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. State Department has announced that all available visas in the Employment-Based Fourth Preference (EB-4) category for fiscal year (FY) 2025 have been issued. The annual limits will reset with the start of the new fiscal year (FY 2026) on October 1, 2025.

The fiscal year 2025 limit for family-sponsored preference immigrants is 226,000. The worldwide level for annual employment-based preference immigrants is at least 140,000. The per-country limit for preference immigrants is set at 7% of the total annual family-sponsored and employment-based preference limits, i.e., 25,620. The dependent area limit is set at 2%, or 7,320.

Entitlement to immigrant status in the DV category lasts only through the end of the fiscal (visa) year for which the applicant is selected in the lottery. The year of entitlement for all applicants registered for the DV-2025 program ends as of September 30, 2025.

Allocations in the charts were made in chronological order of reported priority dates, for demand received by March 3rd.