Each month, the Visa Office at the Department of State subdivides the annual preference and foreign state limitations specified by the INA into monthly allotments based on totals of documentarily qualified immigrant visa applicants reported at consular posts and CIS Offices, grouped by foreign state chargeability, preference category, and priority date. If there are sufficient numbers in a particular category to satisfy all reported documentarily qualified demand, the category is considered "Current." Whenever the total of documentarily qualified applicants in a category exceeds the supply of numbers available for allotment for the particular month, the category is considered to be "oversubscribed" and a visa availability cut-off date is established. The cut-off date is the priority date of the first documentarily qualified applicant who could not be accommodated for a visa number.
The chart below shows the estimated total number of visas available for each employment preference category and country for fiscal year 2012.
*The provisions of the Chinese Student Protection Act require that the China annual limit be reduced by 1,000. A total of 300 numbers are deducted from the E3 category, and 700 from the E5 category.
**The EW category is currently entitled to no more than 5,000 of this total.
Note that unused numbers can "fall-down" from E1 to E2 to E3. Unused numbers can "fall-up" from E4 and E5 to E1. This is taken into consideration when setting monthly/annual targets for number use based on historical/recent patterns.
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