Reviewed by Jinwen Liu, Esq. · Last updated: October 2026
Say your name is Lin. You write backend code for a hardware company in San Jose, and your EB-3 priority date is March 12, 2024.
On September 1, the Visa Bulletin told you that date was more than two years away from mattering. You read it on your phone in the parking lot, did the subtraction, and put the phone face-down on the passenger seat.
On October 1, the same bulletin says you can file your green card application.
Nothing about your case changed in those thirty days. The calendar did. October 1 is the start of the government's new fiscal year, a fresh batch of green card numbers opens up, and the October 2026 Visa Bulletin moved China's employment-based filing dates by margins measured in years, not weeks.
What moved, and by how much
Every Visa Bulletin has two charts. Chart A, "Final Action Dates," decides when a green card can actually be approved. Chart B, "Dates for Filing," decides when you can submit the application. For people born in mainland China, October's movement happened almost entirely on Chart B:
- EB-3: from January 8, 2022 to April 1, 2024 — 814 days, about 27 months.
- EB-3 Other Workers: from October 1, 2019 to October 1, 2020 — twelve months.
- EB-2: from January 1, 2022 to January 1, 2023 — a full year.
- EB-1: from December 1, 2023 to July 1, 2024 — seven months.
- EB-5 (unreserved): from March 1, 2017 to March 1, 2021 — four years in a single bulletin. The rural, high-unemployment and infrastructure set-aside categories remain "Current" on both charts.
Chart A barely moved. EB-2 advanced one month, to October 1, 2021. EB-3 advanced seven days, to January 8, 2022, and EB-3 Other Workers moved five months, to October 1, 2019. EB-1 stayed at July 1, 2023, and EB-5 unreserved stayed at December 1, 2016.
