The 7% per-country limit and how unused visas spill over
Change the yearly family and employment limits to see how the per-country cap and the dependent-area cap follow, then read why some countries outgrow them.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method and past error
Per-country cap for a given year
Per-country cap (7%)
25,620
| Combined preference limit | 366,000 |
| Dependent area cap (2%) | 7,320 |
With the minimums of 226,000 and 140,000, the cap is 25,620, the figure printed in the Visa Bulletin.
No single country may receive more than 7% of the family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas available in a year. The Visa Bulletin sets the family limit at 226,000 and the employment limit at a minimum of 140,000, so the combined total is 366,000 and the per-country cap is 25,620 visas; a dependent area is capped at 2%. The cap applies to the family and employment preferences together, not to each category separately. When demand from a country is larger than its share, the State Department gives that country its own column, and its cutoffs fall behind the worldwide dates. The October 2026 bulletin lists four such oversubscribed areas: mainland China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. Unused numbers do not vanish: the bulletin assigns what one preference does not need to the next, such as EB-2 numbers not used by EB-1, and USCIS notes that annual limits can be exceeded with visas left from the previous year.
The arithmetic behind the cap
Section 202 of the Immigration and Nationality Act limits how many preference visas any one country may use in a year. The October 2026 Visa Bulletin prints the figures it works with in its opening paragraphs. The table rebuilds them from those numbers.
| Item | Visas per year | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Family-sponsored preference limit | 226,000 | annual minimum printed in the bulletin |
| Employment-based preference level | 140,000 | at least this number |
| Combined preference total | 366,000 | family plus employment |
| Per-country cap (7 %) | 25,620 | printed as 25,620 |
| Dependent area cap (2 %) | 7,320 | printed in the October 2026 bulletin |
Two details are often missed. The cap is shared by the family and employment preferences of one country: an Indian brother of a citizen in F4 and an Indian engineer in EB-2 draw on the same national allotment. And the cap is a ceiling, not a guarantee. A country with little demand uses far less than its share, and its applicants simply follow the worldwide dates.
What happens when a country goes over
The bulletin explains that the prorating provisions of section 202(e) apply to a country that reaches its limit, and that applicants are then reached in the order in which their petitions were filed. In practice that produces a separate column: the State Department sets a cutoff for that country in each category where its demand is too high, and leaves the worldwide date for everyone else. The column follows the country of chargeability, which USCIS describes as usually the country of birth, not the passport or the place of residence. How chargeability is decided.
The effect can be large. This month F4 for Mexico stands at April 22, 2001, about 10.5 years behind the worldwide F4 date of October 22, 2011. EB-2 India is at November 1, 2013, about 11.2 years behind the rest of the world at January 1, 2025. The rules and the degree are the same; the country of birth changes the line.
Why these four countries have a column
The October 2026 bulletin names its oversubscribed areas: mainland China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. They are not oversubscribed in the same places. The table shows, for each category, the share of bulletins since October 2015 in which the country’s date differed from the worldwide date.
| Category | Mexico | Philippines | India | China (mainland) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | 100 % | 100 % | 0 % | 0 % |
| F2B | 100 % | 100 % | 0 % | 0 % |
| F3 | 100 % | 100 % | 0 % | 0 % |
| F4 | 100 % | 100 % | 93 % | 7 % |
| EB-1 | 0 % | 0 % | 66 % | 65 % |
| EB-2 | 0 % | 0 % | 100 % | 99 % |
| EB-3 | 0 % | 45 % | 100 % | 99 % |
| EB-5 | 0 % | 0 % | 46 % | 96 % |
The pattern splits in two. Mexico and the Philippines are family-migration countries: their own dates appear in essentially every family bulletin for F1, F2B, F3 and F4, while their employment rows mostly follow the worldwide line. India and mainland China are the reverse: their family rows track the worldwide dates in almost every month, apart from F4 India, and their EB-2 and EB-3 rows have been separate in almost every bulletin since 2015, with EB-1 and EB-5 separate for part of the period. Each country’s column exists because of where its demand is concentrated.
Columns that came and went
The list is not permanent. In our archive of 294 bulletins, an employment column for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras appears in 83 issues, from May 2016 to March 2023, and a Vietnam column in 41, from May 2018 to September 2021. Mainland China has had its own family column only since January 2005. In the bulletin’s own terms, a column marks an oversubscribed chargeability area, and the list is revised as demand changes. The Central American column.
Spillover: where unused numbers go
Within each family of categories, the bulletin assigns the numbers one preference does not use to another. On the employment side, EB-1 receives numbers not required by EB-4 and EB-5, EB-2 receives numbers not required by EB-1, and EB-3 receives numbers not required by EB-1 and EB-2. On the family side, F1 receives numbers not required for F4, F2 receives unused F1 numbers, F3 those not required by F1 and F2, and F4 those not required by the first three. The flow is why a quiet year in EB-1 can speed up EB-2 for countries whose dates are held back.
A second kind of spillover crosses fiscal years. USCIS notes on its visa availability page that the annual limits may be exceeded when certain immigrant visas from the previous fiscal year were not fully used. The bulletin, for its part, describes the employment level as at least 140,000 rather than as a fixed number. We do not estimate those recalculations; we report the limits the bulletin prints, and the forecasts on this site learn from how the cutoffs actually moved.
A worked example: when the employment level rises
Because the cap is a percentage, it moves with the totals. Suppose a year in which numbers carried over from the previous year lift the employment level by 20,000 above its minimum, to 160,000. The combined total becomes 386,000, and 7% of it is 27,020, or 1,400 more visas for each country than the printed 25,620. That is a real increase for a country at the limit, but a small one next to queues measured in years. The mini calculator at the top of this page runs the same arithmetic for any pair of limits; the figures are illustrations, not a forecast of a coming year.
Three common misreadings
- Citizenship decides the column. It is the country of chargeability, normally the country of birth. A person born in India who holds another passport is still charged to India unless an exception applies.
- Each category has its own 7%. The share covers the family and employment preferences of a country together, then section 202(e) spreads that country’s numbers across categories.
- A separate column is a penalty. It is a consequence of demand. The same country can follow the worldwide date in one category and lag far behind in another in the same bulletin, as the table above shows.
What the cap means for a single applicant
For one person the cap is not something to calculate but a column to read. Find your category, find the column for your country of chargeability, and compare your priority date with that date, not with the worldwide one. Where a spouse was born in a country with a shorter line, cross-chargeability can sometimes move a whole family to that column; the rules are narrow and worth checking with an immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative.