Read Section D: Why ROW Is Current and India Is Retrogressing in June 2026

Every immigration blog will lead with the same headline this week. India EB-1 retrogressed to December 15, 2022. India EB-2 retrogressed to September 1, 2013.

Those are the dates. They are bad. You can stop reading there if all you wanted was the news.

But the State Department also told you, in writing, why this is happening. It's in Section D of the June 2026 Visa Bulletin.

Almost nobody is reading it. Here it is:

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Read that twice. The State Department is openly explaining that final action dates have been advanced for some applicants specifically because issuance to applicants from other countries has been restricted.

The visa numbers don't disappear. They get redirected.

If you've been wondering why ROW EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 have been current for most of FY 2026 while you stared at the same India dates month after month, Section D is your answer.

What PP 10949 and PP 10998 Actually Do

Presidential Proclamation 10949 was signed June 4, 2025. It fully suspended immigrant visa entry for nationals of 12 countries (Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) and partially suspended entry for seven more (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela).

Presidential Proclamation 10998 followed on December 16, 2025, taking effect January 1, 2026. It expanded the list.

Combined, the two proclamations fully restrict entry of nationals from 19 countries and Palestine, and partially restrict entry of nationals from 20 countries. That's 39 countries plus Palestinian travel documents in total.

These restrictions are not abstract. DOS partially suspended visa issuance to nationals of 19 additional countries (Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Cote D'Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) for nonimmigrant B-1/B-2 visitor visas and F, M, J student and exchange visitor visas, and all immigrant visas with limited exceptions.

PP 10998 also eliminated categorical exceptions that PP 10949 had carved out for immediate family immigrant visas (IR-1/CR-1, IR-2/CR-2, IR-5), adoption visas (IR-3, IR-4, IH-3, IH-4), and Afghan Special Immigrant Visas.

In plain English: the United States is issuing far fewer immigrant visas to nationals of these 39 countries than it would have in a normal fiscal year.

The Math: Why ROW Benefits and India Doesn't

The worldwide employment-based limit for FY 2026 is at least 140,000 visas. The per-country cap is 7% of the combined family-sponsored and employment-based preference totals, applied as a pro-rata limit to each subcategory. For India that works out to roughly 2,800 numbers each in EB-1 and EB-2 in a normal year.

India and China hit their pro-rata cap every year. ROW countries typically don't.

Here's what normally happens. Nationals of all countries draw down their share of the worldwide pool.

Unused numbers from countries below their cap "spill over" back into the worldwide pool. Some of that spillover trickles to India and China, but most of it gets used by ROW applicants because India and China are already demand-constrained at their per-country limit.

Here's what's happening now. Issuance from 39 countries is throttled. Their pre-allocated numbers are largely going unused.

To prevent the FY 2026 worldwide pool from sitting on the shelf, DOS is advancing final action dates and dates for filing in categories where ROW demand can absorb those numbers. ROW EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 have been current for most of FY 2026.

That's not a coincidence. That's the lever Section D is describing.

India doesn't benefit from this redistribution, and the reason is more subtle than "India is at the 7% cap". The 7% per-country limit isn't a hard ceiling forever. INA Section 202(a)(5) lets oversubscribed countries exceed 7% when numbers would otherwise go unused, which is how India has historically grabbed 15-20% of EB-2 in good years.

What DOS is doing in FY 2026 is preempting that spillover. By advancing ROW final action dates aggressively, they manufacture ROW demand during the demand-driven allocation phase. That ROW demand absorbs the freed numbers before the year-end spillover step would activate.

By the time the spillover question would be asked, there's nothing left to spill. The mechanism isn't "the freed numbers physically can't reach India". The mechanism is "DOS is routing them to ROW first via accelerated dates, which preempts the Section 202(a)(5) spillover that would have flowed to India under normal mechanics".

It gets worse for India in FY 2026 specifically. Section E of the same bulletin states bluntly:

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EB-1 India went unavailable at the end of FY 2025 under similar cap pressure, and pending I-485 cases in that category were held until FY 2026 numbers became available on October 1, 2025. The same outcome is back on the table for FY 2026, and we're only in month 9.

What June 2026 Actually Shows

Lay the final action dates side by side and the pattern is impossible to miss.

ROW is current or near-current across the board. China and India carry the entire retrogression load.

The bulletin telegraphs more pressure ahead. Section F warns EB-2 China may retrogress or go unavailable.

Section G says the same for EB-3 Philippines. Section H warns India EB-5 Unreserved may retrogress as soon as next month.

What This Means Going Forward

Section D itself contains the warning that should shape every applicant's planning for the rest of FY 2026:

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Translated: the same lever that moved ROW dates forward can move them backward. There are two scenarios that would trigger ROW retrogression in July, August, or September.

Scenario one: demand materializes. The dates moved fast because DOS expected lower issuance from restricted countries.

If ROW applicants file faster than DOS modeled, the worldwide pool gets used up. Categories retrogress. This is what just happened to India.

Scenario two: the proclamations are amended. If PP 10949 or PP 10998 are narrowed, lifted in part, or modified by court order, restricted countries start using their numbers again. The freed pool shrinks. ROW dates that moved forward on the assumption of low issuance get pulled back.

Either way, the dates you see in June 2026 aren't stable. They reflect a particular policy configuration in a particular fiscal year. That configuration can change.

What To Do

If you're India EB-1 or EB-2 with a priority date that's still current under June's chart: File your I-485 now if you haven't already. The window may close.

If your I-485 is pending and your priority date is still current under June's bulletin: Premium processing your I-140 where applicable, and getting your medicals refreshed, protects you against being caught mid-adjudication if your category goes unavailable. If the category does go to "U", USCIS holds the pending case rather than denying it. They wait for numbers to be available again, which in practice usually means the FY rollover on October 1.

If you're ROW EB-2 or EB-3 and your priority date moved up suddenly: Don't assume permanence. File while the window is open. The same Section D that explains why your date moved is the same paragraph warning it can move back.

If you're tracking the EB-3 downgrade path from India EB-2: June actually reopens it. EB-3 India sits at 15 DEC 2013, which is now about 3.5 months ahead of EB-2 India's 01 SEP 2013.

For applicants whose EB-2 priority date falls in that narrow band, an EB-3 downgrade with the same PERM and priority date could put you in a category that's already past you. We covered the mechanics in our June retrogression analysis.

The July 2026 bulletin will be released in mid-June. Watch two things: whether India EB-1 holds at 15 DEC 2022 or retrogresses further, and whether any ROW category (especially EB-2 China or EB-3 Philippines, which Section F and Section G flagged) gets the first retrogression hit from the demand side.

For the chart-selection mechanics that govern when you can actually file I-485 under any of these dates, see our May 2026 Chart A switch breakdown.

FAQ

The Takeaway

The visa bulletin isn't a neutral bureaucratic calendar. In FY 2026, it's the downstream consequence of a particular set of presidential proclamations restricting issuance from 39 countries, plus a State Department choice to redistribute the freed numbers across other categories. Section D told you so.

The headline numbers (India EB-1 retrogression, India EB-2 retrogression) are the news. The Section D paragraph is the story.