US Visa Bulletin Priority Date Monitor

Is your green card priority date current yet? Did the cutoff move this month? This Actor reads the U.S. Department of State's monthly Visa Bulletin and tells you the exact priority-date cutoff for any category and country, whether a given priority date is current, and, in monitor mode, exactly how many days a cutoff advanced or retrogressed since last month.

Built for immigration attorneys, paralegals, and green card applicants who check the Visa Bulletin every single month while waiting, sometimes for years, for a priority date to become current. It runs on the Apify platform, so you get API access, monthly scheduling, integrations, and email/Slack alerts on top of the raw data.

Why use the US Visa Bulletin Priority Date Monitor?

• Stop reading the tables by hand. Enter a category (F2A, EB-2, EB-3...) and a country (India, China, Mexico, Philippines, or worldwide) and get the cutoff back as clean, structured data.
• Answer the real question: "is my date current?" Give it a priority date and it applies the Bulletin's own rule (numbers issue only to dates earlier than the cutoff) and tells you yes or no, in plain English.
• Catch movement automatically. Monitor mode compares this month against last month and reports only what actually moved: advanced N days, retrogressed N days, became Current, or became Unavailable. Schedule it once and get alerted when a watched category finally moves.
• Track a whole caseload in one run. Pass a list of client targets and check dozens of category/country combinations in a single, cheap run.
• Read any past month too. Pull the cutoffs from any historical bulletin back to 2001, not just the current one.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. (Optional) Turn on Reference mode first to see every valid category code, country, and available month.
3. Enter a category (e.g. EB-2) and a country (e.g. India). Optionally add a priority date (YYYY-MM-DD) to get a current/not-current verdict.
4. To watch for movement over time, turn on Monitor mode and set a monthly schedule. The first run records a baseline; later runs report only real changes.
5. Run it and read the results in the Output tab, or pull them from the API.

Input

• Category - Family (F1, F2A, F2B, F3, F4) or Employment (EB-1 to EB-5, plus Other Workers, Certain Religious Workers, and the EB-5 set-asides).
• Country of chargeability - worldwide, China, India, Mexico, or Philippines (the only five columns the Bulletin publishes).
• Which chart - Final Action Dates (when a green card can be issued) or Dates for Filing (when documents can be submitted).
• Priority date (optional) - YYYY-MM-DD. Returns a current / not-current verdict.
• Which month - latest (default) or a specific month like August 2026 / 2026-08.
• Targets - An array to check many category/country combinations in one run.
• Monitor mode + Watchlist ID - Report only month-over-month movement, keeping separate histories per watchlist.

Output

Each target returns one dataset row. Example:

{
  "label": "Client A - EB2 India",
  "chart": "employment",
  "dateType": "final_action",
  "category": "2nd",
  "country": "India",
  "bulletinMonth": "August 2026",
  "found": true,
  "cutoff": "01SEP21",
  "cutoffStatus": "date",
  "cutoffDate": "2021-09-01",
  "priorityDate": "2019-01-01",
  "isCurrent": true,
  "verdict": "Priority date 2019-01-01 is earlier than the 01SEP21 cutoff, so it is current and can proceed.",
  "changeDetected": true,
  "movementKind": "advancement",
  "daysMoved": 92,
  "changeSummary": "Advanced 92 days (July 2026 to August 2026): from 01JUN21 to 01SEP21.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-august-2026.html"
}

You can download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML.

Data fields

Pricing

This Actor uses pay per event. There is a small fixed fee per run (it opens one browser session to get past the source's bot protection), then $0.01 per target looked up. In monitor mode, a detected change is $0.05 and a confirmed no-change is $0.002. Checking an entire caseload of, say, 20 category/country combinations in one monthly monitor run costs only a few cents. Because one run reads the whole bulletin, batching many targets into a single run is far cheaper than one run each.

Tips

• Batch every client/target into a single run: the browser session is shared, so 30 targets cost almost the same as 1.
• Use a distinct Watchlist ID per client list so their baselines don't overwrite each other.
• Schedule monitor mode for the middle of the month; the State Department typically publishes the next month's bulletin around the 10th-15th.

FAQ and support

Is this legal? Yes. The Visa Bulletin is a U.S. Government work in the public domain (17 U.S.C. Sec. 105), and the State Department's own copyright page states its Consular Affairs information "is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission." This Actor reads only that published bulletin and uses no State Department seal or branding.

Is this legal or immigration advice? No. This Actor reports the published figures and applies the Bulletin's own current/not-current rule. It is not a substitute for advice from a licensed immigration attorney, and it does not access anyone's personal case.

Which chart should I use? Most people watching for their green card want Final Action Dates. Dates for Filing is when USCIS may let you submit documents earlier; check the USCIS "visa bulletin info" page for whether it applies in a given month.

Found a bug or want another feature? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. If this saved you a manual check of the Visa Bulletin, a review really helps.