How the figures are computed

Everything on this site is arithmetic on published Visa Bulletins. This page defines each term we use, states exactly how each figure is computed, and says where the data comes from and where it stops. Terms link to their authority; nothing here is legal advice.

Terms, with their sources

Cutoff date (final action date)

The Department of State's own definition, from Section A of the October 2023 bulletin in our archive: The final action date for an oversubscribed category is the priority date of the first applicant who could not be reached within the numerical limits. A priority date earlier than the cutoff is within the month's numerical limits; a later one is not yet.

Current

The bulletin lists C instead of a date: every priority date in that category and chargeability area is within the limits that month. (DOS bulletin page.)

Unavailable

The bulletin lists U: no visa numbers are authorized for that category and area that month, usually because the annual limit has been reached before the fiscal year ends.

Oversubscribed

A category or country with more qualified applicants than numbers available, so a cutoff date applies. Worldwide preference limits and the per-country ceiling come from the Immigration and Nationality Act: INA §201 (worldwide levels), §202 (per-country limits, 7% of the family and employment totals), and §203 (allocation among preference categories).

Chargeability

The country an applicant's visa number is counted against, normally the country of birth. The bulletin lists China, India, Mexico and the Philippines separately when they are oversubscribed; everyone else is all other chargeability areas. (USCIS: Visa Availability and Priority Dates.)

Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing

Two charts per bulletin. Final action dates govern when a visa or green card can be issued. Dates for filing govern when an adjustment application may be submitted, in months USCIS designates that chart. (USCIS.)

Priority date

An applicant's place in line: for family cases, generally the date USCIS received the petition. It is printed on the I-797 notice. (USCIS.)

Spillover and fall-across

Each month consular posts report documentarily qualified applicants and USCIS reports adjustment applicants; numbers are allotted against the limits, and unused numbers are returned and reallocated within the fiscal year, including from one preference to another under §203. Practitioner explanations of the monthly process: CLINIC's Visa Bulletin explainer. This site does not model spillover; it only records what the bulletin published.

Our computations, exactly

Movement

The difference, in days, between one bulletin's cutoff and the previous bulletin's cutoff for the same category, chargeability area and chart. A change to or from Current or Unavailable is a status change, not a distance, and is labelled as one. Spans are shown rounded (2y 5m, 3w); the underlying figure is the day count.

Behind

The bulletin's effective date minus its cutoff date, in years to one decimal. A cutoff within 92 days of the bulletin date is shown as ≈ Current.

Retrogression (moved backward)

A negative movement: this bulletin's cutoff is earlier than the previous bulletin's. We count it from the published dates only, whatever the bulletin's notes give as the reason.

Record and anomaly stamps

A stamp compares one advance with the earlier advances in the same series within our archive, Oct 2015 to the latest bulletin, and never with history before the archive. Record advance means no earlier advance in the archive was as large; Largest since <year> means the last advance as large was at least 24 bulletins ago; Exceptional means the advance is at or past the 98th percentile of that series' earlier advances, and large the 90th percentile. A series needs 24 measurable date-to-date changes before percentiles apply; below that, fixed thresholds of 120 and 365 days are used and the result is marked limited history. Every stamp's hover text states the window.

Typical pace

The mean movement per bulletin over a series' measurable date-to-date changes, leaving out the advances classified as exceptional, and saying how many were left out. It describes the archive; it is not a forecast and is withheld below the same 24-change minimum.

Data provenance and revisions

• Source. The monthly Visa Bulletin from the U.S. Department of State, parsed from the official HTML or PDF. The original document of every bulletin is archived unchanged, and each month page links to it.
• Verification. Each parsed bulletin is checked against the set of categories and areas active in that era; a shortfall is stored as partial and raises an alert rather than filling the gap.
• Corrections. When the Department reissues a bulletin, the reissued version replaces the earlier one and the month page's verification date changes. When we correct a parsing error, the same happens. Figures derived from a corrected month (movement, stamps, pace) change with it; nothing is edited by hand.
• Independence. KTech Software Solutions LLC is not affiliated with the Department of State or USCIS.

Limitations

• The archive begins with the Oct 2015 bulletin. Anything called a record is a record of that window.
• Nothing on this site predicts a future cutoff or says when a priority date will be reached. Past movement does not set future movement.
• The Department's monthly allocation is its own process and only partly described in the bulletin; we record its outputs, not its inputs.
• USCIS chart designations are read from USCIS's page after each bulletin and can lag it by days.

Questions or corrections: contact us.