Saturday, October 31, 2020 - The United States Department of State has finally released the November 2020 Visa Bulletin indicating when immigrant visa applicants should submit DS-260 to the National Visa Center and when an immigrant visa will become available. This month saw no advancement for China, which allows those with priority dates earlier than December 15, 2015 to file DS-260/I-485, with visas continuing to be available to those with priority dates earlier than August 15, 2015. Hong Kong remains not subject to the China Priority date. Vietnam advanced 2 weeks to a priority date of August 15, 2017, with all continuing to be eligible to file DS-260/I-485. All other countries remain current.
This month’s Visa Bulletin did not provide any clues into what Department of State has planned to maximize visa use under COVID19 reduced services, other than the unspoken fact that it is late. This seems to indicate that this month’s Visa Bulletin was more difficult to set to than usual for the department. We look forward to hearing from Charlie Oppenheim, Chief of the Visa Controls and Reporting Division in 2 weeks during IIUSA’s Virtual EB-5 Industry Forum.