Albrecht Periodic Table of U.S. Nonimmigrant Visas

Parolees are excluded from the table. Under INA § 212(d)(5), parole is a discretionary release into the United States without formal admission; the parolee’s legal status is not comparable to that of a nonimmigrant on a temporary visa.

Visa Waiver Program (VWP) entrants are also excluded. They are admitted without a visa under INA § 217 and have only limited rights to change status, extend their stay, or contest removal; the table’s framework does not apply to them.

All visas in this table are classified by their relation to the dual-intent doctrine: whether they allow concurrent pursuit of permanent residence.

This table classifies visas by behavior, not only by statutory pedigree. As in a chemical periodic table, the organizing axis is an observable property: how the visa operates under the law as administered, not the label its statute carries. Only H-1B, L-1, and V are expressly carved out of the § 214(b) presumption of immigrant intent, but other visas behave as dual-intent and are classified accordingly. Some Full Dual-Intent visas share three behavioral properties: no foreign residence requirement, no limit on total stay, and no bar to approved or pending labor certifications or immigrant visa petitions. For example, the E-1, E-2, and E-3 treaty visas meet all three, as does O-1. Others expressly permit the pursuit of permanent residence after admission (T, U, K, S, N, V).

The Limited Dual-Intent category has no statutory basis; it is an empirical grouping for visas in the intermediate behavioral position: they require a foreign residence the holder does not intend to abandon, but tolerate approved or pending labor certifications or immigrant visa petitions. These are P-1, P-2, P-3, P-4, R-1, and R-2.