State Department Announces Update to July Visa Bulletin: NO Employer Based Visa Numbers will be made available until Oct 2007

Incredibly, the U.S. Department of State has announed today, July 2, 2007, that it is updating its Visa Bulletin for July 2007.  The July Visa Bulletin was the visa bulletin which all of a sudden declared most of the Employer Based visa categories to be current.  Now, today, the State Depatment has announced that it unexpectedly used "almost 60,000 Employment numbers" in June, and as a result the State Department is changing the July numbers.  Specifically, the State Department has announced that all numbers for the Employment-based preference cases have been used up for this fiscal year (FY-2007), and that new Employment-based preference numbers will only be made available for the next fiscal year (FY-2008), beginning October 1, 2007.

This is a truly incredible turn of events:  one moment the State Department announces that most of the Employment-based preference categories will be current in July, and the next moment they announce that all of the Employment-based preference categories are unavailable in July--even before any new cases were filed in July.  In other words, this was a pure miscalculation on the part of the State Department, and was not based on any deluge of filings on July 2--since the numbers were cut off before anyone even filed in July.

The State Department announcement is as follows: 

Visa Bulletin
Number 108
Volume IX
Washington, D.C.

UPDATE ON JULY VISA AVAILABILITY

The sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices during the past month have resulted in the use of almost 60,000 Employment numbers. As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates.  All Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices have been notified of the following:  

Effective Monday July 2, 2007 there will be no further authorizations inresponse to requests for Employment-based preference cases.  All numbers available to these categories under the FY-
2007 annual numerical limitation  have been made available.  Employment preference numbers will once again be available to these chargeability areas beginning October 1, 2007, under the FY-2008 annual numerical limitation.  

Department of State Publication 9514
CA/VO: July 2, 2007