All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed: Assignment and Charts

On the Department of State’s monthly Visa Bulletin, “all chargeability areas except those listed” is the default column, and it applies to green card applicants born in every country that isn’t separately listed for having exceeded its per-country visa cap. As of the April 2026 bulletin, only four countries are listed separately: China (mainland born), India, Mexico, and the Philippines.¹ If you were born anywhere else, this is your column.

That covers most of the world. Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Australia, Japan, France, and roughly 190 other countries all fall here. Wait times in this column are generally shorter than those for the four listed countries, though “shorter” isn’t the same as “immediate.” Some lower-priority family-sponsored categories still carry multi-year backlogs even for applicants in the general column. The dates simply tend to move more steadily and more quickly than they do for oversubscribed countries.

How Your Country Gets Assigned

Your chargeability is determined by your country of birth, not your citizenship and not where you live. Federal law is direct: “the foreign state to which an immigrant is chargeable shall be determined by birth within such foreign state.”² Someone born in France who later becomes a Japanese citizen is still charged to France. A naturalized American born in India is charged to India.

This trips up applicants who assume their passport controls which line they stand in. It doesn’t. Your birth certificate does.

A Narrow Exception for Birth in a Third Country

If you were born somewhere neither of your parents was born or resided at the time, you can be charged instead to the birth country of either parent.² The implementing regulation mirrors that language and requires that neither parent was born in or resided in the country of the applicant’s birth at the time.³ This exception matters most when a parent’s temporary travel or work assignment produced a birthplace in a country that later became oversubscribed.

Using a Spouse’s or Parent’s Chargeability

Federal law also lets families avoid being split by different chargeability assignments. If you and your spouse were born in different countries, you can use whichever chargeability is more favorable, as long as you’re accompanying or following your spouse and that country hasn’t hit its cap.² Children can use a parent’s chargeability the same way.

For applicants born in one of the four listed countries, cross-chargeability is often the fastest legitimate path into the general column. Someone born in India whose spouse was born in Canada may be able to use Canada’s chargeability and follow the “all chargeability areas” dates. The Foreign Affairs Manual confirms that these exceptions are available even if the parent or spouse being borrowed from was never actually charged to that country’s quota.⁴

Why Only Four Countries Sit Outside This Column

Federal law caps any single country at no more than 7% of the total family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas issued in a fiscal year.² With roughly 226,000 family-sponsored and 140,000 employment-based preference visas available each year, that works out to about 25,620 visas per country across both categories.

Four countries consistently generate more demand than the cap allows: China (mainland born), India, Mexico, and the Philippines. When a country’s demand exceeds its share, the Department of State assigns it its own column with separate, slower-moving cutoff dates. That condition is called oversubscription. Every other country’s applicants share the general column, and the cap is what keeps any single nation from consuming most of the yearly supply.

Reading Your Date

Once you know you’re in the “all chargeability areas” column, you compare two things: the date shown in that column for your preference category, and your own priority date. Your priority date is your place in line. For family-sponsored cases, it’s the date USCIS properly received your Form I-130 petition.⁵ For employment-based cases, the priority date is the date the Department of Labor accepted the labor certification, if one is required; if not, it’s the I-140 filing date.⁶

If the bulletin shows a cutoff date, your priority date must be earlier to move forward. A priority date of April 15, 2022 clears a cutoff of “01MAY22.” A priority date of June 1, 2022 does not. A “C” in the column means the category is current and visas are available to all qualified applicants regardless of priority date. A “U” means the category is unavailable.⁶

Which Chart to Use

Every monthly bulletin publishes two charts, and picking the wrong one is a common filing mistake. The Final Action Dates chart tells you when a visa can actually be issued or an adjustment of status application approved. The Dates for Filing chart tells you when you can submit the application paperwork, even if the final decision has to wait.

USCIS announces each month which chart adjustment-of-status applicants should use. When visa supply for the fiscal year exceeds known demand, USCIS authorizes the Dates for Filing chart. Otherwise it directs applicants to Final Action Dates. If your category is already current on Final Action Dates, or the Final Action date is later than the Dates for Filing date, you can use Final Action Dates regardless of the monthly designation.⁷ If you’re processing at a U.S. consulate abroad instead of adjusting status inside the country, the National Visa Center uses the Dates for Filing chart to decide when to request your final documentation.

When Dates Move Backward

Cutoff dates don’t always move forward. When the Department of State determines that demand is outpacing the remaining visa supply for the fiscal year, it can pull dates backward. This is called retrogression. A category that was current last month may suddenly show a cutoff date, or a cutoff may jump months or years into the past.

Retrogression is most common near the end of the federal fiscal year in September, when the annual supply runs low. It hits the “all chargeability areas” column less frequently and less severely than the four listed countries, but it still happens, particularly in competitive employment-based categories.

If you’ve already filed your I-485 and your priority date retrogresses, your case isn’t denied. USCIS holds the application until your priority date is current again. You keep your place in line, remain in authorized status while the application is pending, and can continue renewing employment authorization and travel documents. If the I-485 has been pending for at least 180 days, you can change employers to a position in a similar field without losing your place in the green card queue.

Getting Chargeability Wrong

Claiming the wrong chargeability isn’t a small paperwork issue. If the government finds that you deliberately misrepresented your country of birth to qualify under a faster-moving column, a willful material misrepresentation finding under the Immigration and Nationality Act results in a permanent bar from receiving a visa, with no statute of limitations. The misrepresentation has to be intentional and has to have been capable of influencing the officer’s decision. Honest mistakes don’t trigger the permanent bar, but the burden of explaining the error falls on you.

Most chargeability errors aren’t fraud. They come from confusion about which country applies when someone was born in one place and raised in another, or uncertainty about whether a dependent territory is charged separately from its parent country. Sorting this out before you file is cheaper than correcting it after a denial, and it matters most in time-sensitive filings like the Diversity Visa lottery, where there is no appeal and the window closes at the end of the fiscal year.

1
U.S. Department of State. Visa Bulletin For April 2026
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1152 – Numerical Limitations on Individual Foreign States
3
eCFR. 22 CFR 42.12 – Rules of Chargeability
4
U.S. Department of State. 9 FAM 503.2 Chargeability
5
U.S. Department of State. 9 FAM 503.3 Priority Dates
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Visa Availability and Priority Dates
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin