First DV2021 Visa Bulletin published

OK – the new Visa bulletin has been published. The naming convention of the bulletins are odd – because this one is being published in August, is named, the “September” Visa Bulletin and gives the numbers for October interviews. That is a standard pattern regarding the naming convention, but I tend to focus on the interview date availability rather than anything else.

OK – so here are the numbers for October interviews. Remembering that the immigrant ban means no interviews will be held in October unless the ban is blocked.

Now – in a normal month those people that are current (meaning their case number is below the number shown for their region), and have forms processed early enough, would expect their 2NL in about 1 to 2  weeks from now. This is the same every month. VB is normally published from the 8th to the 15th of each month (although more recently it has been published a few days later – around the 17th/18th), and 2NLs in the second half of the month.

However, this month will be different, and because the court case will not be heard until the end of August, I think it is very likely we will not see ANY 2NLs sent out this month at all, and therefore no interviews scheduled for October. None.

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means. Some countries have been called out as “exceptions” meaning that selectees chargeable to those two countries (regardless of where they will interview) are subject to a lower VB number for the month than the rest of the region. This is done to slow down processing for countries with a high number of selectees to spread out the workload over a longer time. Please read this linked article on how to read the visa bulletin.

OK – with all that being said, there is a FAR more important piece of information in this Visa Bulletin. As I have been telling people to expect, the number of selectees per country are published in this bulletin. That allows us to calculate how many selectees are chosen overall, and to understand whether this is an under selected or over selected year.

So – the news is not a pleasant, but also not unexpected surprise. There are 132,404 selected applicants from around the world, that number includes principal selectees and derivatives. By normal standards that is an OVER selected year. As I explained a few days ago that happens about half the years – where they select more selectees than they think they will need. This leads to a year of concerns for people, particularly those people with high case numbers. Why high case numbers – well, processing order gives low case numbers the first chance for interview, so as the year progresses, those people with high case numbers have to wait to see if their number ever gets a chance. It is a long, and sometimes unhappy wait. In recent years we have seen cutoffs in place at the end of the year, meaning people with case numbers higher than the final cutoff don’t get an interview.

Other interesting info in the VB is that the selectees were chosen from only 6.7 million qualified entries, which was about 11.8 million people including derivatives. That is about HALF of the typical number of entries, and I would guess that is almost entirely the impact of the new passport rule. As I had explained last year -DV2021 offered the best chance of being selected that we have seen for many years – because less entries increases the chance of selection. The VB also confirms there could be up to 54750 visas available.

Now these are the facts. Now we have to start some analysis of the selectee numbers to figure out where each case lies within the case number ranges. I will be working on that today and will post in the next day or so. But be warned, this year is not going to be easy to predict. We go a hugely important piece of information today, but there is still much we don’t know – so it is too early to be certain how the year will go. The current bans in place may remain, may be expanded, who knows. The court challenges could block at least the immigrant bans. The pandemic could continue to have impact. This is an election year, so with any luck Trump will lose the election then the new administration might remove some or all the ridiculous bans that Trump put in place.

So many factors are in play, so I am going to recommend everyone should remain cautious about predictions and so on because we just don’t know what will happen over the coming months.

Have a look for my analysis over the next day, and I will of course be publishing a video to discuss the information released today.

The following is the statistical breakdown by foreign state of chargeability of those registered for the DV-2021 program: