Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing: what the two charts actually do

Final Action Dates

The Final Action Dates chart is the real queue. A visa number can be allocated, and a case actually approved, when your priority date is earlier than the Final Action Date published for your category and your country of chargeability. Until then the case can sit fully documented, interviewed, and approvable in every other respect, and still not be approved, because there is no number to give it.

This is the chart consular processing runs on from beginning to end, and it is the chart every approval runs on regardless of route. When people talk about "waiting for a date to become current", in the sense that matters, this is the date they mean.

Dates for Filing

The Dates for Filing chart sits earlier in the queue, sometimes by a few weeks and sometimes by years. It exists for administrative reasons rather than legal ones: the agencies want documents gathered, fees paid, and files ready before numbers become available, so that a number is not left unused while somebody hunts for a birth certificate.

Reaching the Dates for Filing cut-off means an application may be lodged. It does not mean a number exists, it does not start any approval clock, and it does not guarantee that the Final Action Date will follow along behind it in any particular timeframe. Filing on this chart is a queue-management step. Nothing more is promised by it.

A filed application is not an approvable one. Between the Dates for Filing cut-off and the Final Action Date, a case is on file and waiting, which is a better place to wait than outside the system, but is still waiting.

Which chart applies to you

It depends on where you are and on what the relevant agency has said for that month.

• Consular processing, outside the United States: the National Visa Center uses Dates for Filing to decide when to collect documents, and the Final Action Dates chart governs when an interview can result in a visa. Approval always runs on Final Action Dates.
• Adjustment of status, inside the United States: USCIS decides each month which of the two charts it will accept for new I-485 filings, and publishes that decision on its own site rather than in the bulletin. It is not automatic, it is not the same every month, and it can differ between the employment-based and family-sponsored charts in the same month.
• Approval, in either route: Final Action Dates. There is no version of this where a case is approved on the filing chart.

The USCIS decision has a rule behind it, and it is worth knowing what the rule is. How USCIS chooses the filing chart

Why the gap between the two charts is worth watching

The distance between the two charts is itself information. A large gap means the agencies expect a substantial queue of documented cases to build up ahead of number availability. A gap that closes to nothing means the filing chart has stopped being useful: there is no longer any point at which a case can be lodged early, because early has arrived.

The gap also moves, in both directions, and it moves independently in each country column. A category can hold a steady Final Action Date for months while its filing date advances, or the reverse.

Each category page on this site shows the current value on both charts, side by side, for all five country columns. Both charts, every category, this month

The short version

• Dates for Filing decides when the paperwork may go in.
• Final Action Dates decide when a green card may be issued.
• Consular cases always end on Final Action Dates. Adjustment cases file on whichever chart USCIS names that month, and still end on Final Action Dates.
• Only one of the two charts has ever approved anybody.