The heavily backlogged dates for most employment based and family based cases should be redressed now, and the opportunity to do so is presently before Congress in the “Visa Efficiency and E-Verify Extension Act” (S. 3414), introduced by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on July 31, 2008 and referred to the Judiciary Committee. This bill would recapture unused employment and family based visa numbers from 1992-2007 for immediate use 60 days after the date that the bill is signed into law. It would also allow for unused numbers in future years to be automatically rolled over to the next fiscal year.
What numbers are involved? Would they be significant enough to make a difference? Annually the family based preferences have a maximum of 480,000 and a minimum of 226,000 visa numbers available.