Annual visa limits reset October 1, the Bulletin moves most, and unused numbers expire September 30 without carrying over. What that means for your case.
Reviewed by Ekaterina Fitenko, Esq. — Florida Bar #1064536. With 20+ years of experience in the legal field, she manages family and employment-based cases through Visa Bulletin movement and retrogression, in English and Russian.
The United States government runs on a fiscal year that begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. Immigrant visa numbers are allocated by fiscal year, and that single accounting fact drives more of what happens to a green card case than most applicants realize.
Congress sets annual limits on how many immigrant visas may be issued in each family and employment preference category. Those limits are not a rolling twelve-month allowance. They are filled, exhausted, and started over on a calendar the applicant does not control and cannot appeal.
Understanding the reset does not make a case move faster. It does something more useful: it tells you which month your case can realistically advance, when a delay is normal rather than a sign something is wrong, and when a delay of two weeks costs a year.
Three things change at once.
Annual category limits refill. Each family preference category (F1 through F4) and each employment preference category (EB-1 through EB-5) receives a fresh allocation of visa numbers. Categories that were exhausted in August or September become available again.
Per-country limits recalculate. No single country may receive more than a fixed share of the annual total in a given category. That share is computed against the new annual pool.
Spillover is recalculated. Unused numbers from certain categories fall into others under statutory formulas — family numbers unused in one year can increase the employment pool for the next, and vice versa. This is why an employment category can jump forward unpredictably in an October Bulletin: the pool it draws from was larger than the year before.
What does not reset is your place in line. Your priority date is fixed by the filing of the underlying petition. The reset changes how far down the queue the cutoff reaches, not where you stand in it.
The counterpart of the reset is less pleasant. Immigrant visa numbers not used by the end of the fiscal year do not roll forward within the same category. They lapse.
For most preference applicants this is invisible — the categories are oversubscribed, and there are no leftover numbers. For applicants close to the front of a queue in the closing weeks of September, it is decisive. A case that could have been finished in September, and was not, does not resume in October at the same point; it re-enters a queue whose cutoff has moved and whose competition has reset.
This is why the final weeks of a fiscal year produce a particular kind of urgency at consulates and at USCIS, and why an interview that slips from late September to October is not a two-week delay in practice.
The monthly Visa Bulletin publishes two tables for each category, and confusing them is the single most common reading error we correct.
For applicants adjusting status inside the United States, USCIS decides each month which of the two charts it will accept, and announces that choice. For consular applicants abroad, the National Visa Center works from the Bulletin's own instructions. The practical consequence: two people with identical priority dates, one in Miami and one abroad, can be on different timetables in the same month.
The October Bulletin is where this choice most often changes, because it is the first month of a new allocation.
At the start of a fiscal year, the State Department has a full annual pool and imperfect information about how much demand will materialize. It sets cutoffs optimistically to make sure the numbers are used — a category that ends the year with unused visas has wasted them permanently.
Demand then reveals itself. When more applicants than expected file against a generous cutoff, the Department must pull the cutoff backward to stay within the annual limit. That backward movement is retrogression, and it is a normal consequence of the year's arithmetic rather than a policy change or a mistake.
The pattern that follows from this is worth internalizing: forward movement is front-loaded, retrogression clusters later in the fiscal year, and a date that is current in October is not guaranteed to be current in May. If your date becomes current, the correct response is to file, not to wait for a better month.
No country may take more than a set share of the annual visas in a category, regardless of how many of its nationals applied. The rule exists to keep any one country from consuming a category; its effect is that applicants from high-demand countries face queues measured in years while applicants from low-demand countries in the same category are current.
Two practical points follow.
Chargeability is not always your country of birth. In defined circumstances a spouse's country of birth, or a parent's, may be used instead — the same alternate-chargeability rules that apply in the Diversity Visa program. For a couple where one spouse was born in a low-demand country, this can move a case forward by years, and it is regularly missed.
The category can matter more than the queue. A worker who qualifies in more than one employment category is not obliged to stay in the one filed first. Whether a change is worth it depends on the cutoffs for both categories at the reset, not on which one felt stronger at filing.
For Diversity Visa selectees the fiscal year is not a rhythm but a wall. DV numbers are allocated to a specific DV year and expire at the end of it, without exception and without carryover. A selectee whose case is not completed by the end of the fiscal year loses the selection entirely.
Because DV case numbers become current in order over the year, a high case number combined with a slow start is the ordinary way a selection is lost. We cover the mechanics separately in our guides to the DV lottery and the Visa Bulletin and to DV-2028 registration.
Most of the calendar is outside your control. These parts are not.
Two local realities shape how the reset plays out for our clients.
Medical examinations and appointment supply tighten in the autumn. Civil surgeon availability in Miami-Dade and Broward is at its worst precisely when applicants with newly current dates all need an examination at once. Booking before the date turns current is the cheapest advantage available.
Field office workload varies within the region. Depending on county, an adjustment case may be handled by a different local office with a different queue, and that difference is not visible in the Bulletin at all.
From our main office at 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 227, Coral Springs, FL 33076, with a second office in Hallandale Beach, we prepare cases for filing ahead of the reset in English and Russian. An initial consultation is $200 for 30 minutes — (305) 315-3425 or fitenkolaw@gmail.com.
We deliberately do not print Bulletin dates. They change monthly, and a stale date on a webpage is worse than no date because it is read as current. Check the Visa Bulletin on the State Department site and, if you are adjusting status, the USCIS page announcing which chart it accepts that month.
No. The priority date itself is not lost — it is a place in line, fixed by the petition. What you lost is the window in which a visa number was available to you. Whether that window reopens in October depends on where the new cutoff falls.
Yes, and it is routine. Retrogression happens when demand against a category exceeds the annual supply and the cutoff must be pulled back to stay within the limit. It is arithmetic, not a decision about your case.
If you are applying from abroad, the Bulletin's instructions govern. If you are adjusting status inside the United States, USCIS announces each month which chart it will accept for filing. The two can differ, and the difference decides whether you may file at all.
Sometimes. Alternate chargeability through a spouse or a parent is available in defined circumstances and can move a case forward by years where one spouse was born in a lower-demand country. It has to be established properly and is worth checking before, not after, a long wait.
Only within your own DV year. DV numbers belong to a specific year and expire with it; they do not carry over and are not replenished by the general reset. For a DV case the fiscal year end is a deadline, not a cycle.
$200 for 30 minutes, in English or Russian. Call (305) 315-3425 or email fitenkolaw@gmail.com to schedule.
This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Visa Bulletin cutoffs, annual limits and filing-chart designations change monthly; confirm current figures on the U.S. Department of State and USCIS sites before acting. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Fitenko Law PLLC, 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 227, Coral Springs, FL 33076 (main office); 600 Three Islands Blvd, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009. Phone: (305) 315-3425. Email: fitenkolaw@gmail.com