For EB-2 and EB-3, your country of birth sets your queue. Your passport does not.

The mechanics that decide your wait, and how each one works. Every row is sourced in the list at the foot of this page.
What decides your wait	How it works
Chargeability	The country you are counted against. Under INA 202(b) the foreign state to which an immigrant is chargeable is determined by birth — not citizenship, not nationality, not current residence. The I-140 is filed under that country and stays there.
The per-country cap	No single country may take more than a fixed percentage of the family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas available in a fiscal year. That is why the Visa Bulletin has a separate column for India and another for China, alongside All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed.
The five columns	All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed, CHINA-mainland born, INDIA, MEXICO, PHILIPPINES. In employment categories the Mexico and Philippines columns are usually current; the India and China columns are where EB-2 and EB-3 cut-off dates actually move.
Final Action Dates	The chart that says when a visa number is available. It governs consular processing without exception, and it governs adjustment of status in any month when USCIS instructs applicants to use it. When your priority date is earlier than the listed date, you may be issued or approved.
Dates for Filing	The chart that says when you may file the adjustment application, ahead of a number being available. It only helps people adjusting status inside the United States, and only in months when USCIS says it may be used. It does not make a green card available.
Current, and unavailable	Current means there is no cut-off and any priority date may proceed. Unavailable means the annual limit for that category and country has been exhausted for the fiscal year, and nobody in it can be issued a number until the new fiscal year begins.
Retrogression	A cut-off date moving backwards from one Visa Bulletin to the next. It happens when projected demand outruns the annual supply. A plan built on one month's chart can be invalidated by the next month's.
Your priority date	Generally the date USCIS received the I-140, or the date the underlying labour certification was filed. It is set by filing, and it is what the Visa Bulletin is compared against. Filing earlier is the only lever that reliably moves you forward.
Cross-chargeability	A person may in limited circumstances be charged to a spouse's or a parent's country of birth instead of their own — only where necessary to avoid separation and only if that country's level has not been reached. It is the largest single planning lever in this system.

The short version

Employment-based preference visas are capped. INA 201(d)(1)(A) sets the worldwide level of employment-based immigrants at 140,000 for a fiscal year, plus certain unused numbers carried over from other categories. INA 203(b) then divides that pool between the preferences — priority workers at 28.6 percent, advanced-degree professionals and exceptional-ability aliens at 28.6 percent, skilled workers, professionals and other workers at 28.6 percent. Every one of those sub-caps feeds the same pool, and on top of all of it sits a limit on how much of the pool any single country may take.

That limit is the per-country cap. It applies to the total number of preference visas issued in a fiscal year, and it is the reason the Visa Bulletin is published as a table of countries rather than a single list of dates. When demand from one country exceeds its share, a queue forms for that country and a cut-off date appears in its column. When demand does not exceed the share, the column reads current.

Which country you are counted against is not a matter of choice, passport, citizenship or residence. The statute is blunt: the foreign state to which an immigrant is chargeable is determined by birth. A person born in Mumbai and naturalised in Toronto is chargeable to India. A person born in Kathmandu and living in Bengaluru for fifteen years is chargeable to Nepal. A person born in Delhi who holds a Singapore passport is chargeable to India. Nothing about the passport changes the column.

In EB-2 and EB-3, the practical consequence is that there are two oversubscribed countries and then there is everyone else. The All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed column in EB-2 and EB-3 is current or close to it in most months. The India and China columns carry cut-off dates measured in years, and in EB-3 India they have at times been measured in more than a decade. Two people with the same degree, the same employer and the same filing date can be separated by that entire span on the basis of where they were born.

None of this is a judgement about the strength of a case. A cut-off date is a queue position, not a score. The Visa Bulletin does not say your evidence is weak or your contribution marginal. It says the number of people chargeable to your country of birth who want this category of visa exceeds the number the statute makes available to that country this year. Merit is assessed in the petition. The queue is assessed in the Bulletin. They do not talk to each other.

Two charts, not one: Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing

The two charts answer different questions

The Visa Bulletin carries two tables for employment-based preferences. Final Action Dates answers: when can a visa number actually be issued or an adjustment approved. Dates for Filing answers: when may an applicant submit the adjustment application. The first is the finish line. The second is the starting gun for paperwork, and it sits months or years ahead of the first. Confusing them is the most common misunderstanding in this area, because the two charts can differ by a decade in the same month for the same country.

Dates for Filing only helps adjustment, and only when USCIS says so

The Dates for Filing chart is not a statute and not a right. USCIS decides each month whether adjustment applicants may use it: if USCIS determines there are more immigrant visas available for a fiscal year than there are known applicants for those visas, it will state that the Dates for Filing chart may be used; otherwise it will state that the Final Action Dates chart must be used. There is also an override — if a category is current on the Final Action Dates chart, or the Final Action Dates cut-off is later than the Dates for Filing cut-off, applicants in that category may file using the Final Action Dates chart that month.

Consular processing runs on one chart only

People applying for an immigrant visa abroad do not get the benefit of Dates for Filing. Consular processing is governed by Final Action Dates. A person with a priority date inside the Dates for Filing window but outside Final Action Dates has no route to an interview at a consulate that month. This is the structural reason the two audiences — adjustment applicants and consular applicants — experience the same Visa Bulletin differently, and why a filing strategy that works from inside the United States can be unavailable to someone applying from outside it.

What filing early actually buys you

Filing the adjustment application at the Dates for Filing stage has three concrete effects. It locks in your ability to remain and work in the United States while the queue advances, through the pending application and the associated employment authorisation and travel documents. It preserves your priority date and your place. And it starts the clock on the parts of the process that run independently of visa availability. What it does not do is produce a green card, because no number exists yet.

Chargeability follows birth, not nationality

The rule, and why it was written this way

INA 202(b) provides that the foreign state to which an immigrant is chargeable shall be determined by birth. The design is deliberate. Nationality can be bought, granted, renounced and layered — a person can hold two passports, acquire a third, and lose one without moving house. Birth cannot be edited. By tying chargeability to birth, the statute closes the obvious arbitrage of acquiring a passport from a country with a shorter queue, and it fixes each person's position in the system at a fact that never changes.

The four exceptions, and they are narrow

The statute provides limited alternatives. An alien born in the United States is considered to have been born in the country of which they are a citizen or subject, or, if they are not a citizen or subject of any country, in the last foreign country in which they had residence as determined by the consular officer. An alien born within a foreign state in which neither parent was born and in which neither parent had a residence at the time of birth may be charged to the foreign state of either parent. And the two cross-chargeability routes described below. Everything outside those is birth.

Cross-chargeability is the rule worth knowing

A child may be charged to a parent's foreign state, and an alien may be charged to a spouse's foreign state where they are chargeable to different states — in each case only if necessary to prevent the separation of child from parent or husband from wife, and only if immigration charged to that other state has not reached the numerical level for that fiscal year. The condition is not decorative. If the spouse's country is itself oversubscribed in that category, the cross-charge does not rescue the case, because the statute conditions it on that country's level not having been reached.

What that means in practice

A person born in India married to a person born in, say, Germany or Brazil may be able to charge to the spouse's country of birth and join a queue that is current rather than one measured in years. This is the single largest planning lever available to families in a backlog, and it turns on a fact — where each spouse was born — that is often never checked until someone is already deep into the process. Derivatives do not help themselves: a spouse and children charge to the principal applicant's country, so the benefit flows one way within a case, not out of it.

Colonies and dependent areas

A person born in a colony or other component or dependent area of a foreign state overseas from the foreign state is charged to that foreign state under INA 202(c), subject to a further limit within the same section that restricts how many such persons may be charged to it in a fiscal year. The chargeability country of record is therefore the foreign state, not the territory.

The per-country cap, and why only two countries bind

The cap is a share, not a number

INA 202(a)(2) limits the number of family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas that may be issued to natives of any single foreign state in a fiscal year to 7 percent of the total available. Because the total pool is fixed by statute and the share is a percentage of it, the cap is not a fixed number of visas — it moves with the annual total, and in employment categories alone it is a ceiling worth several thousand visas a year. The cap exists for a stated purpose: to prevent the visa system from being dominated by a handful of countries with the largest applicant populations, so the allocation remains broadly distributed rather than first-come-first-served globally.

Why India and China and not Mexico and the Philippines

The Visa Bulletin prints five columns in the employment preferences: All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed, CHINA-mainland born, INDIA, MEXICO, PHILIPPINES. The Mexico and Philippines columns exist because those two countries historically reached their per-country limits in the family preferences, where their backlog is largest. In employment categories, their columns are usually current. The countries whose employment-based demand actually exceeds their share, and whose columns therefore carry advancing cut-off dates, are India and China. That is an arithmetic outcome of applicant numbers, not a policy aimed at either country.

Small-country applicants are effectively uncapped in practice

The share is large enough in employment categories that only the very largest applicant populations reach it. A person born in a country with modest employment-based demand never hits the ceiling, so their column reads current and their wait is determined by processing time rather than by a queue. This is not a preference for those countries and it is not a reward for anything. It is what the allocation looks like when demand from a country sits below its share.

The cap applies to visas issued, not to petitions filed

The limit constrains how many numbers can be used, not how many petitions can be approved. That is why the I-140 can be filed, adjudicated and approved years before a number exists, and why there is real value in filing early even when the Bulletin shows a long queue. The petition establishes the priority date and the classification. The queue controls when those convert into permanent residence. Filing is not blocked by a backlog, and a backlog is not shortened by filing in a stronger category — only by filing earlier, or by being chargeable somewhere with room.

A backlog, not a verdict

Nothing in the Bulletin assesses merit

The Visa Bulletin is a supply-and-demand readout. The Department of State projects how many numbers will be needed by each country and category, compares that against the statutory supply, and publishes a cut-off date where demand exceeds supply. The projection changes monthly as new petitions are counted and as earlier cases resolve. Cut-off dates move forward, stall and move backward purely on that arithmetic. A retrogressed date does not mean cases in that category were judged weaker. It means the projected demand grew relative to the supply.

Why dates move backwards

Retrogression happens when the Department of State's earlier projection underestimated demand, or when an unusually high number of applicants with early priority dates become documentarily ready at once. The correction is to pull the cut-off date back so that fewer numbers are issued than the annual limit allows, preserving the per-country share. An applicant who was told in one month that they could file can be told in the next month that the date they needed has moved behind them. That is a real risk to plan around, not a rumour.

Unavailable means closed for the year

When the annual limit for a category and country is reached, the Bulletin shows unavailable rather than a date. No visa number can be issued to anyone in that category and country for the remainder of the fiscal year. This is distinct from a cut-off date, which simply places you in a queue. Unavailable closes the queue until the new fiscal year opens it again.

The queue is managed, not endured

People with approved petitions and long queues have three real moves. They can file a second petition in a lower preference to use a shorter queue, carrying the original priority date across — the common downgrade from EB-2 to EB-3, and back again when the dates invert, which they periodically do. They can use cross-chargeability to a spouse's country of birth where the conditions are met. Or they can change category entirely, where the facts support it, into a preference with more headroom. Each of these is a queue decision. None of them changes the strength of the underlying case, and none of them should be confused with one.

The honest limit of the whole system

A stronger petition does not move you up a backlog that both routes feed into. People who need to be in the United States while an immigrant petition is pending usually need a work route running in parallel — a temporary classification that can be filed and renewed independently of the queue — rather than a different preference theory. The queue is solved with dates, categories and chargeability, not with evidence.

Worked example: two engineers, one filing date

Two senior engineers at the same company, both with master's degrees, both on the same team, both with approved EB-2 petitions filed the same month. The first was born in India. The second was born in Vietnam. Same employer, same job, same evidence, same priority date. Their petitions are equivalent in every respect that a petition can be equivalent in.

The second engineer is chargeable to a country whose employment-based demand sits below its per-country share, so the All Chargeability Areas column applies and reads current. There is no cut-off to wait for. Their wait is processing time: the adjustment or consular steps run when they are ready to run, measured in months, and the green card arrives in the ordinary course.

The first engineer is chargeable to India, where demand in EB-2 and EB-3 exceeds the per-country share, so a cut-off date appears in the India column and their priority date sits behind it. Their wait is measured in years. During that time the position can move forward, stall or retrogress, which means the answer to when can I file can change between two consecutive months. The petition is approved and means nothing about when the number arrives. Nothing about the case is weaker. The queue is simply longer.

Now add one fact. Suppose the first engineer's spouse was born in Vietnam or Germany or Brazil. Under the cross-chargeability rules in INA 202(b), the principal may in some circumstances be charged to the spouse's country of birth instead of their own, provided it is necessary to prevent the separation of husband and wife and provided that country's level has not been reached. If those conditions hold, the case moves out of the India column and into a current one. The engineering, the employer and the evidence do not change at all. The column does.

That is the point of this page in one example. Country of birth selects the column, the column selects the queue, and the queue is a function of statutory arithmetic rather than of how good the case is. Two things are worth doing early and cheaply: establish which country each family member is chargeable to, and find out whether the spouse's country of birth opens a cross-charge. Both are facts, both are answerable before filing, and either can be worth more time than any change to the petition itself.

Questions this raises

Is my green card queue based on my nationality or my country of birth?

Country of birth. Under INA 202(b) the foreign state to which an immigrant is chargeable is determined by birth, not by citizenship, nationality or residence. Acquiring a different passport does not change your column in the Visa Bulletin, and neither does moving to another country.

What is the difference between Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing?

Final Action Dates says when a visa number is available to be issued or an adjustment approved. Dates for Filing says when you may submit the adjustment application, ahead of a number being available. USCIS decides each month whether adjustment applicants may use the Dates for Filing chart. Consular processing uses Final Action Dates only.

Why do India and China have their own Visa Bulletin columns?

Because demand from those two countries exceeds their share of the annual employment-based allocation. INA 202(a)(2) limits the preference visas any single country may take in a fiscal year. When demand outstrips that share a cut-off date appears in the country's column; when it does not, the column reads current.

Does a long backlog mean my case is weak?

No. The Visa Bulletin is a supply-and-demand readout, not an assessment of merit. A cut-off date reflects the number of people chargeable to your country of birth who want that category of visa compared with the statutory supply. Merit is assessed in the petition, and the two processes are independent.

Can I use my spouse's country of birth to avoid the backlog?

Sometimes. Under INA 202(b) an alien chargeable to a different foreign state from their spouse may in certain circumstances be charged to the spouse's state, but only where necessary to prevent separation of husband and wife and only if immigration charged to that country has not reached its numerical level for that fiscal year.

What does unavailable mean on the Visa Bulletin?

It means the annual limit for that category and country has been reached for the fiscal year. Unlike a cut-off date, which places you in a queue, unavailable closes the category until the new fiscal year begins. No visa number can be issued to anyone in that category and country in the meantime.