Why Do Employment-Based EB Applicants Always Look Forward to October 1

Every October 1, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) resets the immigration visa allocations. This marks the start of the new fiscal year for the U.S. government.

In simple terms:
This is a fresh supply of green cards becomes available for employment-based (EB) applicants in these categories:

• EB-1: Priority workers
• EB-2: Advanced degree professionals
• EB-3: Skilled workers/professionals
• EB-4: Religious/special workers
• EB-5: Investors

According to the law (Immigration and Nationality Act, Sec. 201), the U.S. sets a limit of over 140,000 immigrant visas per year for all the employment-based categories combined.

Where does the 140,000 figure come from?
It’s set by the U.S. Congress through federal law and calculated using this formula:
140,000 = base cap of 120,120 + any unused family-based visas from the previous fiscal year

So if there are any unused visas from family-based categories (like F2A or F4), these visas “spill over” into the employment-based categories. This means the EB cap for that year increase. (This happened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020: over 260,000 EB visas were available in 2021 due to massive spillovers.)

For EB-3, roughly 40,040 visas per year are allocated (28.6% of the total) but this is further split between skilled and unskilled.

And because there’s a 7% per-country maximum cap, only about 9,800 visas per year are allotted each country, like the Philippines.

The Good News:
When countries like those in Europe, Australia, or New Zealand don use up their visa allocations (because fewer people want to immigrate to the U.S. from those countries), their unused visas can spill over to with backlogs, like the Philippines, India, or China.

So if your Priority Date (PD) isn’t current yet, the October Visa Bulletin and those that follow are the most important to watch out for.
This is the start of a new distribution cycle sometimes this is when the cut-off dates suddenly move forward, in what’s called “The Big Jump, What is “The Big Jump”?
“The Big Jump” to the sudden advancement of cut-off dates in the Visa Bulletin. That’s why, if your PD is getting close, you pay close attention starting in October onward.

Example:
This happened during the October 2020 Visa Bulletin, when almost all of 2019 became current for EB-3 Philippines due to spillovers and the new fiscal year reset.

So you’re still waiting, don’t lose hope you could be next to make that jump.