The U.S. Department of State announced Tuesday that it has issued all Employment-Based First Preference (EB-1) green cards for fiscal year 2025, halting new visa issuances until October 1, when the FY 2026 quota resets.
The EB-1 program covers priority workers, including individuals with extraordinary ability, top professors and researchers, and multinational executives. By law, this category accounts for 28.6% of all employment-based immigrant visas.
The cutoff follows similar announcements that EB-2 visas had already run out for FY 2025, with high demand driving retrogressions in priority dates across several categories. Officials attributed the exhaustion to an “unprecedented surge” in usage of the roughly 140,000 employment-based visas available annually under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which also imposes a 7% per-country cap.
Earlier this year, the State Department also reported that EB-4 Special Immigrant Visas hit their cap in just five months, leaving applicants facing years-long waits.
Visa issuances for EB-1, EB-2, and other employment-based categories will resume on October 1, 2025, the start of the new fiscal year.
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