Visa Bulletin India EB2: Months of Relief, Decades of Arithmetic

Last updated: 28 September 2026.

Twelve years. That is how long someone with an Indian EB-2 priority date from the autumn of 2014 has been waiting for a green card, and this month the wait has no number on it at all. The visa bulletin India EB2 entry has read ‘U’, for unauthorized, since July, and it still does in the September 2026 bulletin. On 28 September the October bulletin, the first of the 2027 fiscal year, had not been published; last year’s appeared on 3 September.

When the date returns, the State Department’s own expectation, set out in the July 2026 bulletin, is that it will ‘likely’ advance to at least 15 July 2014, depending on demand and next year’s limit. That would be welcome. It would also put the queue back where it stood in April. I think the relief October can bring will be measured in weeks and months, and the wait in decades, because the wait is set by one percentage in one statute that no bulletin can alter. This piece is about that percentage, what it does to families, and how to build a life that does not hang on a monthly PDF from Washington.

Seven per cent of a long line

The rule is in section 202(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1152). No single country may receive more than 7% of the combined family and employment preference visas in a year. In fiscal year 2026 that came to 28,862, according to the State Department. The cap is identical for every country. India, with about 1.46 billion people in the World Bank’s 2025 figures, is held to the same ceiling as Iceland, with about 392,000.

Now do the sum for EB-2 alone, as an illustration. The law gives the advanced-degree category 28.6% of the employment-based total (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(2)), and that total was 186,317 in fiscal year 2026. When a country’s demand is heavy enough for the cap to bite, the law prorates its numbers across the categories, so India’s EB-2 share works out at roughly 7% of the EB-2 total: about 3,700 visas a year on our arithmetic from the published figures. That is not an official allocation, and in some years numbers left unused elsewhere spill across and add to it. But it is the right order of magnitude, and it covers principal applicants and their families together. A software architect with a spouse and two children uses four of those numbers.

Set that trickle against the line. The National Foundation for American Policy, a research group that argues for more skilled immigration, estimated from USCIS data for December 2025 that 731,566 Indians were waiting in EB-2, counting its own estimate of dependants. In its August 2026 brief it projects a potential wait of 179 years for an Indian who files in EB-2 from January 2026. The American Immigration Council, working from USCIS quarterly data, counted 642,226 approved I-140 petitions awaiting a visa at the end of fiscal year 2025, 73.4% of them for people born in India.

Treat those figures as what they are: estimates by groups with a view, and the 179 years as a projection that no one will actually live out. People leave the line. They change category, go home, give up, die. The front moves faster than an average implies, and a reader with a 2014 date is far nearer the front than a new filer. Still, no sensible adjustment turns the arithmetic into a few years for the people behind. A few thousand places a year; several hundred thousand people. You do not need a forecast to see the shape.

October changes none of it.

Visa bulletin India EB2 dates, one fiscal year on

Read down the first column. The final action date opened the year at 1 April 2013, jumped about fifteen months to 15 July 2014 by April, fell back to 1 September 2013 in June, and then went dark when India’s pro-rated EB-2 limit was reached. If the State Department’s expectation holds, October restores 15 July 2014. A year of bulletins will have moved the front of the queue roughly fifteen months, with a detour on the way. EB-3 India crept about four months, to 1 January 2014. Past pace is no promise: the same year that brought the jump brought the retrogression.

What the October bulletin can still change

One number could still surprise, and it is the size of the pot. Under section 201(d) of the Act (8 U.S.C. 1151), the employment-based limit is 140,000 a year plus any family-preference numbers left unused the year before, which is how fiscal year 2026 reached 186,317. The State Department paused immigrant visa interviews worldwide in late August, as Fragomen reported, and told consulates to resume on 10 September (AILA); most family immigrants abroad receive their visas at an interview. If the pause left family numbers unused in fiscal year 2026, the 2027 employment limit grows, and India’s prorated slice grows with it. That is a scenario, and I would not bank on it. The fiscal year 2027 figure has not been published, and a bigger pot is shared by every oversubscribed country and category, so even a generous year buys India EB-2 months rather than years.

The other thing October decides is which chart you live by. The final action date governs approvals. The dates for filing chart, at 15 January 2015 for India EB-2 all year, governs when you may submit an I-485, but only in the months USCIS says so on its filing charts page. In September, Fragomen and Ogletree reported, it chose final action dates. If your priority date is before 15 January 2015 and you have not filed, gather the family’s birth certificates, marriage certificate and passports now, so that a green light does not find you searching a cupboard in Pune by video call.

The children in the queue

The arithmetic is hardest on children. Under US immigration law a ‘child’ is an unmarried person under 21 (8 U.S.C. 1101(b)(1)). A daughter who was four when her father’s priority date was set in 2014 is sixteen now; a son who was nine has already reached 21. The Child Status Protection Act softens this, but less than many parents assume. The child’s age is taken on the date a visa number becomes available, reduced by the time the immigrant petition was pending, and only if the child seeks permanent residence within one year of that date (8 U.S.C. 1153(h)). Since 15 August 2025, according to Ogletree and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, USCIS treats a visa as available only when the priority date is current on the final action dates chart, not the earlier filing chart; applications already pending before that day keep the more generous 2023 approach.

Follow that through. In a month the category reads ‘U’, no parent’s date is current, so no child’s age can be fixed. But if your priority date was on or before 15 July 2014, it was current in April and May 2026, and a visa may already have become available then, which can start the one-year clock for your child. A ‘U’ month does not reset it. If that is your family, speak to your attorney this week. And an I-140 approved in a few weeks under premium processing subtracts only those weeks from the child’s age. For a family with a seventeen-year-old and a 2014 date, the calculation has an answer, but only a lawyer with your exact dates can give it. Ask this year, not the year of the twentieth birthday. Then make a separate plan for that child’s own status, such as a student visa, so that turning 21 is not the day their right to stay in the only country they remember runs out. Duration of Status Rule Blocked: What Indian F-1 Students Can Assume Now

Congress came close once

Nothing in a bulletin can alter the 7% rule. It is statute, and only Congress can change it. It nearly did. On 10 July 2019 the House passed the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, H.R. 1044, by 365 votes to 65, to remove the per-country cap on employment-based green cards, according to AILA’s legislative tracker. The Senate passed an amended version on 2 December 2020. The two chambers never agreed a single text, the session ended and the bill died.

Be fair about why. Removing the cap would not have created one extra green card. It would have reordered a fixed number of places by date alone, so applicants from countries who wait a year or two today would have waited far longer. That is a real argument, and it is part of why a fix that passed the House by three hundred votes still failed. I would not plan a family’s next decade around it passing soon.

A life that does not hang on the date

For many families the date has been deciding things it was never built to decide: whether to take a promotion that means a new petition, whether to buy a flat in a city you may one day have to leave, whether a second child should be born in Seattle or in Bengaluru, whether a trip home to a parent in hospital is worth the paperwork of getting back. None of that appears in the bulletin. All of it is part of the price, and it is paid mostly by people who did everything the system asked of them: studied, qualified, were sponsored, filed, and waited their turn.

If the date is outside your control, the sensible response is to make the rest of your life less dependent on it. Start with status, because protecting it costs little and losing it costs everything. The six-year H-1B limit still bends: section 104(c) of AC21, written into 8 CFR 214.2(h)(13)(iii)(E), allows extensions in steps of up to three years for anyone with an approved EB-1, EB-2 or EB-3 petition held back by the per-country limit. Your priority date stays yours when a later employer files a new I-140, under 8 CFR 204.5(e)(2), unless the approval is revoked for fraud, wilful misrepresentation, an invalid labour certification or material error. Under the 2016 retention rule, an I-140 approved for 180 days is no longer revoked automatically because the employer withdraws it or closes. And once an I-485 has been pending for 180 days, 8 CFR 245.25 lets you move to a job in the same or a similar occupation, declared on Supplement J. A pending I-485 is not denied because numbers ran out; it waits, and the work permit and travel document continue if you renew them on time.

Then widen the options. EB-1 has its own India queue, at 15 October 2022 in the September bulletin: shorter, not short, and open only to people who meet its standard in full. A petition that stretches the facts is the quickest way to lose the date you already hold. Canada’s Express Entry is a serious plan B for many H-1B professionals, and it pays to run your own score before you need it Canada Express Entry 2026: Latest Draws, CRS Cut-offs and Dates. A deliberate return to India, to a senior role, to parents who are getting older, is also a plan, and a respectable one. Be wary, though, of anyone this week selling a new category as an escape; our EB-5 Grandfathering Deadline: Three Days to File Before 30 September piece explains why the investor route is no shortcut for most families.

For readers in India deciding whether to start: go if the work, the degree and the years are worth having for themselves. On the numbers above, an EB-2 green card is not something a new Indian filer can plan a life around, and nobody selling you the journey should pretend otherwise.

This month, a short list is enough:

1. When the October bulletin appears, check both India EB-2 dates and which chart USCIS names for employment cases.
2. Put your H-1B end date in the diary and ask your employer’s attorney when the next AC21 extension will be filed.
3. If you have a child aged fifteen or over, ask for a Child Status Protection Act calculation on your actual dates.
4. If your priority date is before 15 January 2015 and you have not filed an I-485, have the family’s documents ready.
5. Write down your plan B, with a date by which you would act on it.

Nothing here is legal advice. It is general information as of 28 September 2026, and the October bulletin may change parts of it within days. For anything that touches your status, your job or your children’s filings, speak to a licensed US immigration attorney before you act. If you would like a short note from us the day the bulletin is out, sign up for our visa-update alerts.

A priority date is a place in a line. The twelve years behind it were a life, and they were lived.

Sources

1. US Department of State, Visa Bulletin index (current and upcoming bulletins). Accessed 28 September 2026.
2. US Department of State, Visa Bulletin for September 2026. Accessed 28 September 2026.
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9. Federal Register (via govinfo), Retention of EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 Immigrant Workers and Program Improvements Affecting High-Skilled Nonimmigrant Workers, final rule, 18 November 2016 (2016-27540). Accessed 28 September 2026.
10. eCFR, 8 CFR 204.5. Accessed 28 September 2026.
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26. AILA, Featured Issue: Legislation Impacting the Per-Country Numerical Limitation. Accessed 28 September 2026.
27. GovInfo, H.R. 1044 (EAS), Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2020, 2 December 2020. Accessed 28 September 2026.
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29. Fragomen, State Department temporarily pauses immigrant visa interviews worldwide (August 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.