The US State Department’s December 2025 Visa Bulletin delivers a rare month of forward movement for Indian employment-based green card applicants, even as family-based categories remain locked in place.
The bulletin’s cutoff dates determine which applications the US government will now process. Anyone whose priority date, the day their petition was first filed, is earlier than the published cutoff moves ahead. Anyone with a later date remains stuck in the queue.
For India, every major employment line sees an advance:
- EB-1 moves to 15 March 2022
- EB-2 shifts to 15 May 2013
- EB-3 progresses to 22 September 2013
- EB-4 jumps to 1 September 2020, and the Religious Workers category returns after being unavailable in November
- EB-5 cutoff date leaps five months to 1 July 2021, offering the strongest relief of the month
The forward movement means a larger set of Indian professionals and investors now fall before the updated cutoff dates and can inch closer to a final green card.
The story is different on the family side. Final Action Dates for F1, F2A, F2B, F3 and F4 show no change. The only minor shift: F2A applicants are allowed to file one month earlier. For most family-based categories, the backlog remains unchanged.
USCIS will continue using Dates for Filing for both family and employment streams, allowing eligible applicants to submit adjustment-of-status paperwork earlier, lock in priority dates, and obtain work and travel documents even when a green card number is not yet available.
Overall, December brings meaningful progress for India’s EB applicants, led by the EB-5 jump, while family categories remain frozen in longstanding delays.
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