March 2021 Visa Bulletin Updates/Analysis

China and India EB-1 jumped ahead from January 1, 2020 to August 1, 2020, which means essentially no added wait for regular processing cases and just a slight one for premium processing ones.

Rest-of-world EB-3 remains current for professionals and other workers (less skilled positions).

EB-2/3 for China and India both advanced a few months across the board.

China EB-5 did not move and Vietnam advanced three weeks. This is the interesting one. Because there seems to be little to no movement at the consular stage abroad right now due to COVID, it appears these are being advanced slowly or not at all to avoid a flood of applicants at any one time. For the time being, it means most of those able to file will be AOS applicants - either students or those already in employment-based statuses, which is obviously a vast minority of those awaiting availability.