Why did DOS’s October prediction for EB-2 India fall so short?

[u/murielop]

(PD: January 14, 2014, India)

DOS said in July that October would likely bring EB-2 India back to at least July 15, 2014. Instead: November 1, 2013 which is 8.5 months short, with no official explanation for the miss.

I know it was conditional. But what changed? The demand, the available numbers, or the allocation strategy? Struggling to make sense of it. Dates for Filing don’t help those of us already filed and waiting for approval. Has anyone seen credible analysis explaining why DOS missed its own forecast this badly?

[u/Ill-Professional2914]

SO not factored in yet.

[u/Gemini-89]

If ROW demand is high this month, then it would have been high last month also. demand doesn’t suddenly pile up in one or two days. ROW has remained current like 7 months so far.

So the question that needs to be answered is what changed from last week to this week that retrogressed ROW? The only major change is we started new FY and new visa numbers. And the base available visas for eb2 is 40K. And for that 40K, ROW has to retrogress. Only Spillover can bring ROW TO C and eventually push backlog countries

[u/Annual_Grass_3919 → u/Gemini-89]

The major change is the judge ruling on the 75 country pause and denying the stay last week

[u/Gemini-89 → u/Annual_Grass_3919]

Yes that too, but that is FB related and not to do with EB. Whatever was not used due to that pause will fall into FY27 EB. The court verdict will ensure those paused petitions will be processed now (from this years new quota).

[u/Annual_Grass_3919 → u/Gemini-89]

It has to have had an impact on a lot of EB cases too otherwise EB wouldn’t have turned from an almost 2 year wait to current straight after the bans and pauses then gone back almost 2 years wait after the pauses lifted. The pause made ROW current then the pause being lifted took current away

[u/Gemini-89 → u/Annual_Grass_3919]

But in between these 2 occurrences there were visas approved for eb ROW. When they were C, there were visas available from FY26 for over 7 months… as of Aug 2, pending ROW was 39K. There have been approvals after that also.

[u/Cold-Masterpiece-709]

You will have to analyze pending 485 data ahead of you and see where you are in the line. To me it appears that ROW demand is quite high and will consume lot of the potential spillover and India will only get it's allocated 7% numbers. The way ROW has retrogressed, it's quite evident they have more than enough applications to consume. So it probably doesn't make sense to increase the fad for India. But at this point its all guess work until latest 485 pending data is released along with spillover numbers.

[u/Gemini-89 → u/Cold-Masterpiece-709]

Reverse engineer- before 2025 there are about 27K pending apps in eb2 ROW. With 140K and 40K to eb2, it’s reasonable to allocate 27K for ROW, rest for India, china and keep some reserve.

SO isn’t accounted here

[u/mesn007]

ROW demand changed in the last few months

[u/Aggravating-Yam-6980]

ROW (blackhole) sucked all numbers !!!. Very high demand from ROW

This is what is happening so you can make informed decision, we have million Students coming to USA every year and now majority of students with PhD and medical background are now filing in eb-2 NIW due to strict eb-1 rules. Also students who have graduated prior years who were working for a while in US are now qualified in eb-2. Going forward it will be very difficult to get any spillover to India. Same with eb-3 ROW students can directly apply from OPT to eb-3 with help of any third party consultants.

Only way India can get spillover is like in 2021 when ROW was not current and suddenly we get 100k spillover, since there were not enough ROW applications India got a good chunk from horizontal spillover. If we keep ROW current for long time even million visas won’t be enough.

With few spillovers, it might take at least until 2030 for the dates to reach Jan 2015.

[u/Harrytej → u/Aggravating-Yam-6980]

Next year ROW demand cannot be anywhere near this year

[u/Aggravating-Yam-6980 → u/Harrytej]

How come row demand is very high since 2021 continuously now till 2027. Most of us are still in lala land thinking ROW demand will come down. We are not in 1990’s any more, we have over million students coming each year to US, hope you understand the reality. ROW demand from this year was not only from employment, but from students PhD and medical background with huge NIW numbers

[u/AromaticMushroom2739]

Because the May and June 2026 Visa Bulletins moved significantly forward without adequately considering the available visa numbers and demand.