The November 2015 priority dates

Each month, the Visa Office of the State Department publishes, in the Visa Bulletin, the priority dates for that particular month, for the various family and employment based categories.

A priority date is a person’s “place in line” for a visa, meaning immigrant visas (or green cards) would be available for persons whose priority date is earlier than the cut-off date listed below.

If your priority date was “current,” but later retrogressed (or “moved backwards” and became unavailable) before your immigrant visa was issued (or before you adjusted status in the US), you would have to wait until it becomes current again. 

Beginning in October 2015, the format of the Visa Bulletin changed, in that a new column was added, called the “Application Filing Date.”

If a person’s priority date is earlier than the Application Filing Date, they can already file for adjustment of status and work authorization (provided they are otherwise eligible), even though the Visa Issuance Date (which is the old “priority dates” from previous Visa Bulletins) is not yet current. This allows people to obtain work authorization much sooner than before, where they had to wait for the priority date to be current in order to both file for adjustment and be eligible for a green card.

The priority dates for the Philippines are as follows:

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