EB3 India Priority Date 2026: The Open Lane at 01JAN14

Here is the oddity of the August 2026 bulletin: while the eb2 india priority date august 2026 is U (Unavailable), the eb3 india priority date is open at 01JAN14. Two sibling categories, same country, same 7% cap — and one is finished for the year while the other is still moving. If your priority date predates January 1, 2014, EB-3 is the lane that actually works right now.

Verified India EB-3 Final Action Dates

India EB-3 cleared roughly two years of priority dates between August 2024 and August 2026. After idling at 15NOV13 through the first half of 2026, it nudged to 01JAN14 by July and held. The pace is slow, but at least it is pointed the right way.

Why EB-3 is open while EB-2 is closed

EB-2 and EB-3 are separate preferences with separate annual allocations. When EB-2 burns through its numbers, EB-3 can stay open if its own supply and demand allow. The 7% per-country cap is what makes both India backlogs deep, but the timing of exhaustion is independent. In 2026, EB-2 hit the wall first. EB-3 did not. That is the entire explanation — not a rule change, just arithmetic playing out differently in two lines.

Reading the movement

The plateau at 15NOV13, then the single-step advance to 01JAN14, is textbook bulletin behavior: cutoffs track how many numbers are released against how much demand builds. The planning fact that matters is simply the verified current cutoff, 01JAN14. Watch it in the Visafig archive month to month — if EB-2 stays U and EB-3 keeps creeping, the downgrade question only gets more pressing for applicants stuck in the closed category.