AFRICA CURRENT Except:
Egypt:      21,325
ASIA CURRENT Except:
Nepal:       6,950
EUROPE 23,325
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS) CURRENT
OCEANIA 1,400
SOUTH AMERICA,
and the CARIBBEAN		 1,585

 

 

This is for August interviews and is the penultimate VB for the DV2018 year.

For the inevitable questions. CURRENT means all case numbers in the region can be scheduled. AS region being current was expected, AF region was not.

Those that are current, and have forms processed early enough, they can expect their 2NL in about 1 to 2  weeks from now. For the last three months there have been delays in 2NLs for a large number of people – so we still expect some people to be interviewed that were current in June and July. It is obvious that there has been some delay in scheduling interviews – at least in some embassies. Since this is not normal I don’t have good answers for what that means, what impacts that will cause and so on. Because AF regon is now current it means that the AF embassies that are scheduling interviews as normal will be able to have ANY case number scheduled, but I suspect there will still be some scheduling problems in some of the embassies. It’s going to be interesting.

It looks like there has been a small redistribution from Asia (because AS region cannot use its quota while the travel ban is in force), and that has benefitted OC, SA and EU. Because of this OC and SA might exceed their previous expected numbers (so people with borderline high cases just got some good news) whilst EU is still a low number despite more visas from AS.

One more VB to go for DV2018.

For DV2019 winners – remember this VB is NOTHING to do with your numbers – this is just DV2018.

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means.

Processing is spread out over the full year. You can see the progress of the two previous years in this post about basic questions.  However, some countries have a high number of selectees and those selectees are concentrated in the lower case numbers. For various reasons, mainly to do with embassy capacity, KCC slow down certain countries as compared to the region. So – in Africa, any case with a case number shown as under the new number can be interviewed but for cases from Egypt, that number is lower. That isn’t a big problem, it just “slows down” those countries a little more than the rest of the region. Since selectees from those countries all have lower case numbers, this slowing down does not present any risk. It does not (at this point) mean they won’t allow all selectees an interview from those countries.

To understand why some countries get lower case numbers, read this article about the lottery draw process.