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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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The U.S. Department of State’s May 2026 Visa Bulletin signals a slowdown in green card processing, with minimal forward movement across most family-sponsored and employment-based categories, raising concerns about prolonged waiting times for applicants.
Why It Matters
The monthly bulletin, which determines when applicants can file for or receive permanent residency based on priority dates, shows that many categories remain unchanged compared to April.
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What To Know
The lack of movement suggests that visa availability is being tightly managed under annual numerical limits set by federal law, amid sustained global demand. Family-sponsored categories continued to move slowly, while employment-based categories appeared to plateau after modest gains earlier in the year.
Applicants from high-demand countries, including India and China, continue to face particularly long backlogs due to per-country limits that restrict how many green cards can be issued annually to any single nation. These structural constraints have contributed to extended waiting times in categories such as EB2 and EB3, which cover advanced degree holders and skilled workers.
Employment-based green card categories for India remain largely unchanged, with cut-off dates holding at approximately April 1, 2023, for EB1, July 15, 2014 for EB2, and November 15, 2013 for EB3. These dates reflect multi-year to decade-long backlogs, particularly in EB2 and EB3, which cover advanced degree holders and skilled workers.
For many other applicants, employment-based categories remain “current,” highlighting the impact of the per-country cap system, which disproportionately affects high-demand countries such as India. This structural feature continues to be a key driver of unequal wait times.
The bulletin also highlights growing pressure in the EB5 immigrant investor program, particularly in unreserved visa categories. U.S. officials noted increasing demand, including from Indian applicants, and warned that this could lead to retrogression, a situation in which cut-off dates move backward or visas become temporarily unavailable as demand exceeds supply.
The May bulletin follows a period of modest movement earlier in the year, when some employment-based categories saw incremental advances. However, the latest update suggests that progress has slowed.
Read the full May bulletin here.
What Happens Next
Applicants in employment-based categories, particularly from high-demand countries such as India, are likely to continue facing long backlogs with only minimal monthly movement.
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