EB-1
All other countries
Current
China-mainland born
June 1, 2023
India
October 15, 2022
Mexico
Current
Philippines
Current
You have an approved I-140 in hand, or you are about to file one, and the green card still feels years away. It is tempting to assume USCIS took longer, or will take longer, because of where you were born.
That assumption is incorrect. Your country of birth does not impact your I-140 adjudication. What it does, however, is determine when a visa number is available to you.
Beyond Border attorneys have collectively handled 4,000+ immigration cases across EB-1A and EB-2 NIW categories, including for India-born and China-born self-petitioners navigating exactly this backlog.
If you are weighing your chargeability options against an EB-1A or EB-2 NIW filing strategy, keep reading to see exactly where your country of birth does and does not affect your timeline.
No. USCIS adjudicates Form I-140 on the merits of the petition, meaning the evidence, the eligibility criteria for the category filed, and the service center's current workload. That standard and that processing time range apply the same way regardless of your country of birth.
In practice, this means your I-140 approval timeline runs on the same track as anyone else filing the same category, whether you were born in Germany, India, or China.
What differs by country of birth is not whether USCIS approves your petition, but what happens once it is approved. That difference depends on whether a visa number is available to you under the current Visa Bulletin. For the actual processing time details by category, see our Form I-140 Approval Time 2026 guide.
Country of chargeability is the foreign state against which your immigrant visa number is counted. Essentially, your country of birth, not your country of citizenship.
Citizenship and chargeability are different in U.S immigration. A person born in India who later becomes a citizen of Canada remains chargeable to India for green card purposes, unless an exception applies.
Similarly, a person born in the United Arab Emirates to Indian parents, is chargeable to the UAE, not India, even though they hold Indian citizenship.
This rule exists because of a statutory cap. Under INA 202(a), no single foreign state may receive more than 7% of the total annual preference visa limit. As of the July 2026 Visa Bulletin, that works out to 25,620 preference visas per country and 7,320 for dependent areas.
Countries that send significantly more applicants than this limit allows, such as China-mainland born, India, Mexico, and the Philippines, become oversubscribed, and leads to severe backlog and retrogression.
The practical effect is that your place of birth, not your qualifications or your filing speed, determines which queue you stand in once your I-140 is approved.
The table below reflects the current data from the July 2026 Visa Bulletin. Final Action Dates control when USCIS may approve an adjustment of status application; Dates for Filing control when the application may be submitted, if USCIS has authorized use of that chart for the month.
Final Action Dates, July 2026
Dates for Filing, July 2026
EB-2 is unavailable for India for the rest of fiscal year 2026, meaning India has already reached its pro-rated annual limit in that category. EB-1 India has also retrogressed this year due to high demand.
“Neither of these means a slower I-140 adjudication. Both only reflect that the annual visa cap for India in the EB-2 category has been reached faster,” says Camila Facanha, Head of Legal at Beyond Border. These figures change monthly so check the Department of State's current bulletin as at the time of filing.
If your country of birth is backlogged but your spouse's or child's is not, you may be able to use their more favorable chargeability instead of your own. This is called cross-chargeability, and it is available under narrow, specific conditions.
Under INA 202(b)(2) and 22 CFR 42.12(c), a principal applicant may be charged to their spouse's country of chargeability, or the spouse may be charged to the principal's, whichever is more favorable. This applies provided a visa is not already available to the disadvantaged spouse and both are accompanying or following to join one another.
For example, an EB-2NIW beneficiary born in India, with an accompanying spouse born in France, may be charged to France if the priority date is current for France but not for India.
A child may cross-charge to either parent's country of birth, under INA 202(b)(1). However, this does not run in reverse. A parent can not cross-charge to a child's country of birth, regardless of how favorable it is.
If a child was born in a country where neither parent was born and neither parent had residence at the time of the birth, for example during a family's temporary travel abroad, the child may be charged to either parent's country of birth instead of the birth country, under 22 CFR 42.12(e).
These three rules cover the exceptions to the general chargeability rule. There is no broader option to select a favorable country of chargeability outside of these specific family relationships.
Cross-chargeability applies at the time of I-485 filing or consular processing. The family relationship must exist and be documented at that time. The priority date used must still be current under the more favorable spouse's country's cutoff.
Cross-chargeability does not require refiling or amending your I-140. It changes a visa-availability determination, and the point at which it is raised depends on how you are completing your green card process.
If you are adjusting status inside the United States, the officer evaluates cross-chargeability at the "Verify Visa Availability" step of Form I-485 adjudication.
Both applicants are treated as principal applicants for this purpose, one conferring the immigrant classification, the other conferring the more favorable chargeability. USCIS approves both adjustment applications at the same time.
If you are undergoing consular processing from outside the United States, the consular officer will decide, while the National Visa Center is documenting the case ahead of the interview, not at the point the I-140 was filed.
The I-140 establishes your priority date and category eligibility. It does not ask for, or adjudicate, a chargeability determination for your dependents. That determination happens later, at the visa-availability step, whichever process you are using.
Cross-chargeability is not a workaround that helps everyone. It will not help you if your spouse or child was also born in a backlogged country. It does not run from child to parent under any circumstance. And it does nothing for you if your priority date is already current, since there is no queue to skip.
For India-born and China-born EB-2 NIW candidates without a favorably chargeable spouse, the more consequential conversation is whether EB-1A offers a materially different position under the current Visa Bulletin.
As this month's bulletin shows, EB-1A and EB-2 NIW carry different backlog profiles for the same country of birth . See Beyond Border's EB-1 vs. EB-2 comparison for how the evidentiary standards and priority date pictures differ.
If you are an India-born or China-born professional trying to work out whether cross-chargeability applies to your family, or whether EB-1A gives you a faster realistic path than EB-2 NIW, Beyond Border will assess your case directly. We will tell you plainly if neither option changes your timeline.
Book a free consultation to review your chargeability position and filing strategy together.
No. USCIS adjudicates the I-140 based on the category and evidence, at the same pace regardless of the beneficiary's country of birth. Country of chargeability affects visa number availability after approval, not the adjudication itself.
Chargeability is not something you switch on the I-140. It is evaluated later, at the visa-availability step of Form I-485 adjudication or at the consular processing stage, and only through the specific exceptions described above, most commonly spousal cross-chargeability.
Cross-chargeability only helps if one spouse's country of chargeability is more favorable than the other's. If both spouses are chargeable to backlogged countries, there is no more favorable chargeability to confer, and the standard priority date rules apply to both.
No. Chargeability is based on country of birth, regardless of the citizenship you currently hold.
Not necessarily the same profile. As of the July 2026 Visa Bulletin, EB-1 and EB-2 carry different Final Action Dates for India, and the gap between them can shift from month to month. Compare both categories against your specific evidentiary position before assuming either is faster.
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