SIJ – September 2023 – Final Action Date

The visa bulletin for September of 2023 has been posted. The priority date for all chargeability areas except for those listed is September 1, 2018.

In February of 2022, the priority date was March 15, 2019. However, in March of 2022, the priority date regressed to June 15, 2017. I believed that the June 15, 2017 was an arbitrary number to show that visa numbers were unavailable. Previously, the visa bulletin would say “unavailable” but that led to some confusion as some people mistakenly believed that the entire preference category was removed and “unavailable” permanently.

In October of 2022, the date for final action for employment-based fourth preference is March 15, 2018 so visa numbers are available once again but the date has regressed an entire year from March 15, 2019 to March 15, 2018. This is bad news for some of our clients as they were closed to being current prior to the regression.

The federal year resets in October of 2023 so new visa numbers are available in October of 2023 and there should be some movement with the priority date.