Your priority date: where to find it and how to read it against the bulletin

One date, set once, used for years

The priority date is fixed by the first accepted filing in your case and does not change while that petition stays alive. USCIS lists which filing sets it on its visa availability page:

• Family preference (F1 to F4): the day USCIS received a properly filed Form I-130.
• Employment with labor certification (most EB-2 and EB-3): the day the Department of Labor accepted the PERM application. The employer then has 180 days from the PERM approval to file Form I-140, or the date is lost with the certification.
• Employment without labor certification (EB-1, national interest waiver): the day USCIS accepted the Form I-140.
• EB-4 and EB-5: the day USCIS accepted Form I-360 or Form I-526.

Nothing that happens later moves the date: not the approval, not a change of address, not a new lawyer. What can happen is that a second petition gives you a second date, and in some employment cases an older date can be carried to a newer I-140. That rule is in the portability guide.

Reading the I-797 notice

USCIS prints the priority date on the Form I-797 Notice of Action for the petition: the receipt notice (I-797C) when the case is accepted and the approval notice when it is granted. Look for three items close together: the receipt number, which identifies the case in every later letter and online status check; the section line, which names the relationship or the job category and tells you which row of the bulletin is yours; and the priority date box, which holds the day that counts.

Two mistakes come up often. The first is reading the “received date” of a later form, such as an I-485 or I-765, as the priority date: those forms have their own receipt dates that play no role in the line. The second is taking the notice date, printed at the top, which is the day the letter was produced. If the approval notice was lost, the same date appears on the receipt notice.

The comparison, step by step

The Visa Bulletin has two tables for family cases and two for employment. Find the row for your category and the column for your country of chargeability (usually the country of birth; see chargeability). The value there is a cutoff. Your date qualifies when it is earlier than that cutoff, not equal to it. Take F2B for most countries this month: the Final Action Date is August 22, 2019. A priority date of March 1, 2019 is earlier, so it is current and a visa can be issued. The Date for Filing in the same box is September 1, 2019.

The table shows why the country column matters so much. The same F2B date that is close to the worldwide cutoff can be years away from the Mexican one, because demand from Mexico is larger than its 7% share of family numbers, so it gets its own line.

Final Action or Dates for Filing

The Final Action chart decides when a green card can actually be approved or a visa issued. The Dates for Filing chart is an earlier waiting room. Inside the United States, USCIS posts each month on its filing charts page which chart it accepts for Form I-485: in October 2026 it is the Dates for Filing chart for family cases. Applicants abroad use the Dates for Filing chart to know when the National Visa Center will take their documents; the interview itself waits for the Final Action Date. If you only remember one rule, it is that the approval follows the Final Action chart every time. The two-chart guide goes through the monthly designation in detail.

What “current”, “C” and “U” mean

Current describes your date: it is earlier than the cutoff this month. C describes the whole box: every priority date qualifies, so there is no line at all. This month EB-1 for most countries reads Current (C) in the Final Action chart, and F2A for most countries reads Current (C) in the Dates for Filing chart, which means any F2A applicant may file the I-485 even though the approval still waits for the Final Action Date. U means unavailable: no visa may be issued in that box that month, whatever the date. EB-2 India was listed as unavailable in July 2026, August 2026 and September 2026, the closing months of a fiscal year. A “U” is a pause, not a reset: the priority date keeps its place, and the box reopens with a date, usually in October when the new fiscal year brings new numbers.

Watching the date over time

Cutoffs move once a month, by a few days, by months, or not at all, and sometimes backwards. Since the archive starts in December 2001, every family category in the worldwide column has gone back at least once. Two habits help. Note the cutoff each month next to your own date, so the distance is a number you track rather than a feeling. And look at the same box over several Octobers rather than one month, because large moves often come when a fiscal year opens in October and corrections near its end in September. The calculator above does that comparison for this month; the full priority date calculator adds the history since 2001 and a range for the wait when our back-test says the range can be trusted.

When to ask for help

A priority date question is usually simple. It becomes legal when two petitions exist, when a parent naturalizes, when a child is close to 21, or when an employer withdraws an I-140. In those cases, a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative can read the notices and say which date applies. Be wary of anyone who offers to move a priority date forward for a fee: no form, letter or payment changes the date or your place in the line, and USCIS describes the usual schemes on its avoid scams page. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and we are not affiliated with USCIS or the State Department.