Priority Date

The priority date is your "place in line" for an immigrant visa. For family-based cases, it is the date USCIS received your Form I-130. For employment-based cases with a PERM labor certification, it is the date the Department of Labor received the PERM application. Because there are annual numerical caps by preference category and country of birth, applicants in backlogged categories (F1, F2B, F3, F4, or employment-based EB-2/EB-3 for India and China) wait years — sometimes decades — for their priority date to become "current" in the monthly Visa Bulletin before they can file Form I-485 or complete consular processing.