The visa bulletin has been released, covering the numbers which are current in December.

Now, this does not mean that you can be interviewed in December if your number is under that published number because you need to be “documentarily qualified” (DQ) AND your embassy has to be able to accept your case. Of course with the tiered prioritization (DV being on the bottom of the priority list), that won’t be the case. Few interviews will happen in December, just as few interviews will happen in October, and November. DV2022 is clearly already delayed in processing by both the effort made on DV2021, and the prioritization of DV cases.

The DV2021 lawsuit has made clear that the government should be processing cases and should NOT be prioritizing DV cases as they have, so if this behavior continues despite the DV2021 ruling, then a new lawsuit will be needed for DV2022. We will see how the government reacts to the order for DV2021, and whether they change the priority scheme. To be clear though, that is not ordered by the Judge, because his order ONLY relates to DV2021 cases.

The movement in the VB is low, but that does NOT mean anything about being able to predict how the year will go. You can also see historical VB movement in the link above, but please don’t assume that this year will move like XXXX year simply because the numbers are similar, it doesn’t work like that.

In normal times (but probably not in this month), the following is true.

Those that are current, and have forms processed and documents early enough, can normally expect their 2NL in the next 2 to 3 weeks from now. This is supposed to be the same every month. VB from the 8th to the 15th of each month, and 2NLs in the second half of the month. For the last few months there have been 2NLs in daily batches. I would expect all the October interview 2NLs to have all been sent by the end of this month. The end of the month really means THE END OF THE MONTH. Please don’t waste my time later this month asking about 2NLs. Please. They can be sent right up until the last day of the month.

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means – and you can also read this post on how to read the visa bulletin.

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.