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February Visa Bulletin: F2B Mexico Retrogresses; Most Categories See Small Advancements; F2A and India EB Categories Static

January 10, 2014

The Department of State has released the February Visa Bulletin. F2A and all employment-based categories for India will be unchanged, while most other categories will see incremental cutoff date advancement of between 2 weeks and 2 months. However, F2B Mexico will retrogress by nearly one full year in response to heavy demand, and, while it will not happen in February, we are still expecting F2A retrogression for all regions sometime in 2014.

Family-Based Categories

Most family-based categories will see cutoff dates advance by between 3 weeks and 2 months. The exceptions are:

• All F2A categories and F3 Mexico did not advance
• F3 Philippines only advanced 1 week
• F2B Mexico retrogressed 11 months

The Department of State has also offered the following guidance with regard to future movement of F2A and F2B for Mexico:

MEXICO VISA AVAILABILITY

MEXICO F2B:  The level of demand during recent months has been extremely heavy, in particular for cases filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for adjustment of status processing.  Therefore, it has been necessary to retrogress the February cut-off date to May 1, 1993 in an attempt to hold number use within the annual per-country limit.  Further retrogression of this cut-off date cannot be ruled out.

MEXICO F2A:  Continued heavy demand in the Mexico F2A category will require the retrogression of this cut-off date to hold number use within the annual numerical limit.  Such action is likely to occur within the next few months.

 Employment-Based Categories

Aside from India, which will see no advancement from January, cutoff dates for all employment-based categories will move up by either 1 month (EB2 China) or 2 months (all other categories):

The Department of State offered no forward guidance for employment-based categories.