This is excellent news (although it has some impacts).

You no longer have to submit documents to KCC to become DQ. You will be considered DQ once your DS260 has been submitted (and perhaps processed – see below).

This was announced this morning here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/diversity-visa-2022-update.html

I think they actually implemented this a few days ago because as I mentioned in a tweet yesterday there have been some highly unusual things observed where KCC had scheduled cases that had not received the DQ note, and some cases have been scheduled for December appointments. These things happened in several cases, so by yesterday it was clear that “something” was happening (but of course, there were some who insisted that KCC were “silent” – even though they were clearly doing things).

 

This will have some significant impacts.

  1. It should be MUCH faster to get to be “ready for scheduling”. According to their statement they say you will be ready for scheduling (RFS) as soon as all DS260s are received. It doesn’t mention ANY processing at all! Now that seems a bit bizarre, but if they are accurate in the choice of wording the DS260 submission means you are instantly RFS when you see “completed” on the DS260. I’m a little skeptical on this point – but that is what they are saying for now – please read the NOTE below the bulleted list.
  2. I have no idea what some people will do with their time now they don’t have to obsess about how many cases are DR/DQ today.
  3. If the “received” point is accurate, the date of DS260 submission just became completely unimportant . They are supposed to process cases in CN order, and the documents stage is where that was applied. So case number is now the important factor in scheduling.
  4. It is not clear yet whether they will send DQ emails to all cases – but again, according to their statement the DS260 submission is all you need.
  5. You will still need to gather documents for the interview.
  6. Those people that submitted entries without passports will be scheduled for interview as any other case. It still remains to be seen whether refusals will happen for people that did not have a legitimate reason for applying without a passport.

 

NOTE: I normally do not like “trusting” what DoS or KCC write without some other corroboration. There are many examples I can give where they contradict what they write, or simply don’t do exactly what they say. In this case I have written the bulleted list above with the assumption that they really mean RFS is from DS260 being received. No processing. As I mention above I am skeptical about that point, they may still do some processing. If they really mean “received and processed” then the date of DS260 submission could remain important. I imagine it will be some days or even weeks until we see the evidence of that – but for now (based partly on activity observed in the last few days) I will assume they mean only “received” as stated.

 

Now – this next point could be a BIG deal.

This makes it much less likely (but not impossible) that we will see the regions go current. Why? Well the visa bulletin progression is calculated based on visas available and “demand” – meaning how many people were DQ. Since KCC had implemented the document procedure about 4 years ago that got totally screwed up. Earlier this year I wrote to Charlie Oppenheim explaining the problem this caused and “begging” him to handle the demand based on DS260 submission. That is what we have now got. So – the demand is based on every DS260 submitted case – and there is therefore MUCH more demand than capacity on a monthly basis and likely more “demand” than the 55,000 visas available. Coupled with the fact that we have lost significant time already in DV2022 AND there are some embassies not operating at normal capacity, this change in processing is probably bad news for high case numbers.