April 2026 Visa Bulletin
March 19, 2026 2 Comments
April starts the third quarter of the fiscal year – a prime time for Department of State to reassess progress with annual visa issuance and cut-off dates. I anxiously awaited the April 2026 Visa Bulletin, wondering whether we’d finally see a warning note for EB-5 along the lines of “It may become necessary to establish Dates for Filing and Final Action Dates to ensure that issuances in set aside categories do not exceed annual limits.” But, the April bulletin has no such note.
Looking back, the first-time EB-5 final action dates for China and Vietnam both came in a May Visa Bulletin, and were preceded by several months of warning notes. India got its first-ever EB-5 cut-off date in a July Visa Bulletin, with one warning in the previous month. (India EB-5’s second change from “Current” to a final action date came in the first Visa Bulletin of fiscal year 2023, with no prior warning.)
Considering the history, the continuing Visa Bulletin silence on set-asides — even to April 2026 — makes me guess that Department of State is not making good progress in issuing the 6,400 or so set-aside visas available in FY2026. (I look forward to hearing Charlie’s take on this next week, and appreciate WR Immigration continuing to post cautions about how to interpret/misinterpret the Visa Bulletin and AOS window.)
The April 2026 Visa Bulletin does repeat the general note that “Immigrant visa issuance rates for aliens from certain countries have decreased in light of various actions the administration has taken” and therefore “dates for filing and final action dates have been advanced across various immigrant visa categories” [allowing more visa issuance to those select aliens and countries not blocked by many administrative actions]. China Unreserved advanced from August 15, 2016 to September 1, 2016. The movement is small but could result in visas for quite a few applicants, considering that 5,334 Chinese investors filed I-526 between July 2016 and September 2016 (per IIUSA FOIA Request COW2017000616).
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Do you still think pre RIA india unreserved applicants need to wait until 2030 for the backlog to get cleared if someone has March 2022 PD ?
No, I don’t think so. It appears that India Unreserved got an extra helping of visas in FY2025 and likely in FY2026 as well, which moves things along more quickly. (When visas aren’t being issued after all in set-aside categories, India Unreserved can benefit from a larger share of total visas.) Plus the January 2026 Visa Bulletin moved the India Unreserved Final Action Date all the way up to May 2022. That might mean that Department of State judges that it can clear the entire pre-RIA India backlog this year, considering its view into how many apparently-pending applicants are actually attempting/able to move forward. It’s possible that the date reflects temporary processing constraints holding some applicants back, in which case it might later retrogress. But regardless, as of today the Visa Bulletin allows March 2022 priority dates to be getting final action already, at least in theory. The “Unreserved” tab in the Excel linked to the EB5 Timing page has the last available data on the India Unreserved backlog, and my guess at how it might be moving.