Gil Ferrer Immigration Web Journal

Many people have been asking this question in view of the current extreme backlogs in the employment based categories. There has been a published estimate that between the recaptured immigrant numbers from prior years and unused family based immigrant visas, that there should be 248.000 employment based immigrant visas available for the year rather than the normal 140,000. However, when questioned, a State Department spokesman was quoted as saying, "AC21 had recaptured the FY-1999/FY-2000 unused Employment numbers which totaled approximately 131,000. Approximately 101,000 of those numbers remained available for use in FY-2005, and there will be about 8,000 remaining for use in FY-2006. My estimate for the FY-2006 Employment limit will be 156,000 (140,000 + 8,000 (FY-2005 Family) + 8,000 (AC21)."

So, more than normally alloted but still far short of the amount necessary to bring priority dates current.

gcf