Priority date: what it is

Where to find it and how to compare. The Priority Date line on Form I-797 (Notice of Action) for your I-140 petition - not the approval date and not the day you started preparing the case. Then compare it with the bulletin cell for your row (1st for EB-1, 2nd for EB-2 and NIW) and your country-of-birth column: your date earlier than the chart date - the queue has reached you; later - wait for the next issue; C (current) - no limit. There are two charts: Dates for Filing says when you may submit documents, Final Action Dates when they can be decided; which one USCIS accepts this month is on its filing charts page.

Why there is a queue at all. Congress caps employment-based green cards at about 140,000 a year, each category gets about 40,000, and no country of birth may take more than 7% of the total. So for high-demand countries (India, China) the queue stretches over years, while for the rest (ROW) EB-1 is often current for most countries - but not always, and EB-2 (including NIW) has had visible queues.

The priority date for EB-1A. The date is set when the I-140 is received, and the bulletin queue does not stop you from filing the petition itself: an unavailable visa number is a reason to wait for the next stage (the I-485 or the consulate), not to delay filing. Premium processing speeds up only the USCIS decision on the petition and does not move the date: the petition review and the wait for current run in parallel, the clocks do not add up. If the date is current right away, EB-1A and NIW allow concurrent filing - the I-140 and the I-485 together.

Can you lose the date. On approval the date stays yours as long as the petition stands; retrogression (dates rolling back, most often in August-September near the end of the fiscal year) only pauses issuance - nothing is lost. But if the petition is denied and you build a new case, the priority date will be new, which is why the community advises not to delay filing a case that is ready.

Typical mistakes. Comparing the approval date with the bulletin instead of the petition receipt date; taking the country by citizenship rather than birth (the exception is cross-chargeability through the spouse country of birth when both file at the same time); reading the wrong chart; planning around a figure from a chat or a screenshot instead of the current issue on travel.state.gov; assuming an approved I-140 grants status by itself - until the date is current you must maintain lawful status in the US or plan consular processing.