Indian professionals waiting in the long green-card queue woke up on 11 July to a jolt from Washington. The US Department of State’s July 2026 Visa Bulletin shows the employment-based second-preference (EB-2) category for India—and, for the first time, the EB-5 Unreserved investor category—listed as “Unavailable”. In plain terms, the annual quota for these categories has been exhausted three months before the US fiscal year ends on 30 September.
![US July 2026 Visa Bulletin shuts EB-2 and EB-5 Unreserved categories for Indians]()
Amid this uncertainty, many Indian professionals and their employers rely on specialist visa services to navigate shifting timelines. VisaHQ’s India portal offers up-to-date guidance on U.S. work visas, travel documents and renewal options, streamlining paperwork and appointment scheduling so assignees remain compliant while they wait for immigrant-visa numbers to reopen.
Why now? Immigration lawyers point to record post-pandemic demand from Indian STEM workers and a surge of “chain” I-140 petitions filed by spouses seeking their own priority dates. The EB-2 India cut-off date had already retrogressed to 15 May 2013 in June; exhaustion means no new immigrant-visa numbers can be issued at all until 1 October. For EB-5 Unreserved, pent-up demand after the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act—combined with aggressive marketing of rural projects to wealthy Indians—quickly ate through this year’s 772 unreserved numbers. Practical impact: Indian applicants whose adjustment-of-status interviews were scheduled for July or August will see them cancelled or held in abeyance. Consular immigrant-visa appointments in Mumbai will be deferred. Employers must keep affected staff in non-immigrant status (typically H-1B or L-1) beyond intended green-card dates, while families face renewed travel-document planning to avoid being “trapped” in the US while their cases languish. What companies should do now: 1) keep labour-certification and I-140 pipelines moving so cases are “documentarily qualified” when numbers reopen on 1 October; 2) explore alternative classifications such as EB-1C for managers transferred from India headquarters; 3) plan budget for additional visa-renewal trips and dependants’ college-fee implications; and 4) communicate clearly with assignees to reduce anxiety. Immigration counsel also advise monitoring August and September bulletins for further retrogression warnings in other categories. Longer-term, the episode underscores the fragility of US employment-based immigration for Indians. Advocacy groups are already citing the July bulletin in calls for country-cap reform—a debate that could intensify in the 2026 US election cycle.
Amid this uncertainty, many Indian professionals and their employers rely on specialist visa services to navigate shifting timelines. VisaHQ’s India portal offers up-to-date guidance on U.S. work visas, travel documents and renewal options, streamlining paperwork and appointment scheduling so assignees remain compliant while they wait for immigrant-visa numbers to reopen.
Why now? Immigration lawyers point to record post-pandemic demand from Indian STEM workers and a surge of “chain” I-140 petitions filed by spouses seeking their own priority dates. The EB-2 India cut-off date had already retrogressed to 15 May 2013 in June; exhaustion means no new immigrant-visa numbers can be issued at all until 1 October. For EB-5 Unreserved, pent-up demand after the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act—combined with aggressive marketing of rural projects to wealthy Indians—quickly ate through this year’s 772 unreserved numbers. Practical impact: Indian applicants whose adjustment-of-status interviews were scheduled for July or August will see them cancelled or held in abeyance. Consular immigrant-visa appointments in Mumbai will be deferred. Employers must keep affected staff in non-immigrant status (typically H-1B or L-1) beyond intended green-card dates, while families face renewed travel-document planning to avoid being “trapped” in the US while their cases languish. What companies should do now: 1) keep labour-certification and I-140 pipelines moving so cases are “documentarily qualified” when numbers reopen on 1 October; 2) explore alternative classifications such as EB-1C for managers transferred from India headquarters; 3) plan budget for additional visa-renewal trips and dependants’ college-fee implications; and 4) communicate clearly with assignees to reduce anxiety. Immigration counsel also advise monitoring August and September bulletins for further retrogression warnings in other categories. Longer-term, the episode underscores the fragility of US employment-based immigration for Indians. Advocacy groups are already citing the July bulletin in calls for country-cap reform—a debate that could intensify in the 2026 US election cycle.
