Green card update issued by immigration officials

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released its August 2025 visa bulletin, providing critical updates on the processing dates for various immigrant visa categories.

Why It Matters

This monthly bulletin is an essential guide for individuals and families navigating the challenging and often lengthy journey toward permanent residency in the United States.

For those applying for green cards, staying informed about the visa bulletin can be vital because it offers an outline to when they can adjust their immigration status and become eligible, generally based on the date their employer or family member previously filed a sponsorship petition, which establishes the priority date. This differs from the permanent residence application date, which the visa bulletin controls and determines when applicants can proceed.

The new bulletin comes as USCIS faces a major backlog with 11.3 million pending applications.

What To Know

The State Department’s bulletin provides updated priority dates that determine when applicants can proceed with visa applications or adjust their immigration status.

The fiscal 2025 limit for family-sponsored preference immigrants, as set by Section 201 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), is 226,000 visas. For employment-based preference immigrants, the worldwide annual limit is at least 140,000 visas.

Additionally, Section 202 of the INA sets per-country limits for preference immigrants, capping each country’s share at 7 percent of the total annual family-sponsored and employment-based visa numbers combined—approximately 25,620 visas per country.

Dependent areas, such as certain territories, have a separate limit set at 2 percent, or 7,320 visas. These statutory limits heavily influence wait times and visa availability, particularly for countries with high demand—like India and China.

For Indian nationals, these dates are critical as they influence wait times, which in some cases extend to several years due to country-specific limits and backlogs.

Family-based visa categories have seen modest progress, with some queues inching forward by a month.

However, employment-based visa categories remain largely stagnant, reflecting persistent backlogs that continue to affect Indian applicants, particularly in high-demand professional categories.

According to the August bulletin, the employment-based second preference EB-2 visa for Indian nationals has advanced by about one month, a small but meaningful step for many waiting applicants.

Meanwhile, other key employment-based categories, such as EB-3 for India, remain static, indicating the ongoing challenges faced by Indian professionals navigating the green card process.

EB-2 and EB-3 are two key categories of employment-based green cards that allow foreign nationals to obtain permanent residency in the United States through their jobs. The EB-2 category is for professionals who hold advanced degrees or possess exceptional ability in fields such as science, arts, or business.

In contrast, the EB-3 category is designed for skilled workers with at least two years of experience, professionals with a bachelor’s degree, and other workers in unskilled positions requiring less than two years of training. Both categories provide a pathway to a green card, but they differ in eligibility requirements and often in processing times.

The visa bulletin also highlights a contrasting scenario for applicants from China, where similar stagnation continues in employment-based categories. For family-based immigration, some categories continue steady but slow advancement, offering incremental relief to families separated by lengthy visa queues.

The bulletin serves as a crucial guide through the Green Card process for applicants. The “dates for filing” section tells applicants the earliest date they can submit their applications for adjustment of status or an immigrant visa, helping them determine when they’re eligible to move forward based on their visa category and country of origin.

The “final action dates” indicate when a visa number is actually available and when an application can be approved, ultimately leading to permanent residency. Together, these dates act as a guide for applicants, showing where they stand in line and when they can expect their cases to be processed.

To apply in August 2025, applicants must have a priority date that falls earlier than the date listed for their visa category and country of chargeability in the bulletin, confirming their eligibility to file.

Final action dates play a critical role in the processing of green card applications, as they determine when a case can be approved based on visa availability. These dates differ by visa type and nationality, directly affecting how long applicants may wait for their green cards. Staying informed about these dates is essential for anyone navigating the U.S. green card process.

What People Are Saying

Doug Rand, senior official at USCIS during the Biden administration told Newsweek: “There are two very different backlogs at play. USCIS and the State Department have administrative backlogs, which are cases ready to process, as soon as possible. But the visa bulletin reflects a statutory backlog—Congress placed annual limits on the number of green cards back in 1990, and this has created huge bottlenecks that the executive branch can’t fix on its own.”

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